The Aim of the Project

The aim of MUSEUM ONLINE is to enable as many students and teachers as possible to intensively deal with national and international art and culture in substantive terms in the course of project instruction and to work with new communication technologies. It should be noted that MUSEUM ONLINE is consciously adopting an interdisciplinary approach and from the school year 1997/98 onwards is neither confining itself to a specific artistic school or art collection nor are participants limited in their choice of means of expression. The only condition to be met is that at the end of the project term (usually in May each year), the results must be presented digitally in a competition and will be available on this Web Site in German and English.
In addition, MUSEUM ONLINE wants to promote contacts between schools, museums and art and cultural institutions on an international basis.

The "New Media" offer young people the possibility of a new and interesting encounter with museums as well as art and cultural institutions beyond national boundaries.

Aims and objectives of MUSEUM ONLINE:

· To promote scientifical and pedagogical interaction between museums and schools
· To organize real and virtual events procuring cultural awareness for youngsters
· To promote exchange on museum topics utilizing multimedia communication technology on an international level

Concrete experiences and practical acquaintance with the possibilities offered by mm-technology, as done in the MUSEUM ONLINE project, will enable the most competent and confident future users. A work of art can instantly be "fetched" onto the screen or seemingly be "changed" at the press of a button.
Aimed both for museum professionals working in the field of cultural action and education as well as art teachers (as in service training and practical application) who will work with, monitor and analyse the possibilities and demands on different aspects of mm-technology in this art-/ cultural heritage awareness-project (Research acitivties) and for young people who will develop new ways of working together and with museum-collections using multimedia communication technologies (Practical non-research activities: cultural awareness and media /communication-education). Invite selected school groups (teachers and students from Austrian schools as well as from abroad) to experience and work with the different museums' collections.

Net works

Promote innovative ways for cultural heritage awareness and new ways of exchange, and acquaintance (the project description requires international partners in the second phase) challenging the creativity of youngsters in this new field of communication.

Create awareness for the possibilities, stimulate exchange and invite prospecitve partners in the international community to join in the future phases of this network project.

History of the Project

By launching MUSEUM ONLINE in the school year 1995/96, a platform for cooperation between museums and schools based on the use of innovative technologies such as e-mails, World Wide Web,Photo-CD, etc.) was created in Austria for the first time. The project offers students new and exciting opportunities of dealing with the museum as an institution.
While during the first two runs in 1996 and 1997, cooperation was restricted to the Austrian Belvedere Art Gallery, which houses a comprehensive collection of works of art dating from the turn of the century, in the school year 1997/98 the project has been extended to all museums and art and cultural institutions: 1998 and 1999. Teachers and students are thus free to choose the topics they want to deal with in the course of project instruction.

 

URL: http://www.museumonline.at/html/idea/histor_e.htm
mail: EZ