Get out of the house and take the information highway with you into the outdoors.
Remember when the opinions of your teen peers were the most important thing in your life? Walking around a museum, you rolled your eyes at the “geezer” tour guide and shot meaningful glances at your pals.
In the world of the young adult, me is what matters—my thoughts, my feelings, my family, my friends, my environment, my world. On the surface, it seems self-centered. But studies show that learning is a self-engaging activity, and teenagers intuitively know that. To learn about something new, we have to start with its connection to ourselves.
In recent years, the ultimate tool of me culture was delivered into the palm of our hands: the mobile device. My own 15 year old son maintains a personal blog, which he updates regularly with his iPod Touch. Last month, he received 14,799 text messages from his cadre of friends.
If you’re like me, you cringe when a teenager walks by with ears plugged and eyes down. They miss so much. We interpreters tempt them with our trade tricks: Press this button and something lights up. Look at this monitor and listen to a story. Touch this — how does it feel?
Traditional media are still great tools. But to succeed in the “no child left inside” campaign, we need to stop cringing and start thinking about opportunities. Whether iPod, Blackberry, or the next hot gadget, a mobile device is really just a link to the online community, a connection to cyberspace that you can carry around in your pocket. We can tap that connection, and invite youth to tell the stories of the natural and cultural world in their own words, through the technology they like.
Already, mobile devices are used in very positive ways to engage a growing group of tech-savvy audiences. In the field, we see families using rented handheld devices to explore national parks, zoos and museums. On the trail, a father shows a downloaded safety message to his kids on his Blackberry. During a hike, an interpreter turns up the volume on her iPhone so her audience can hear a coyote howl.
Each of these examples is controlled content. We want them to experience it. We research it. We design it. We share it.
But I’ve also seen some intriguing self-motivated mobile device creations. A group of hikers tracks an EarthCache site with a handheld GPS unit, and then uses their mobile phone to email proof of their find to the cache coordinator. A birder looks up a raptor on his iPhone, and with a tap, adds it to his online checklist.
They want it. They design it. They maintain it. And, they share it.
We pride ourselves in knowing our audiences’ interests. To me, it’s become obvious that we need to strip the walls from our exhibits, and create interpretive content that moves with our visitors.
Here is a quick fictitious example: Tell the story of geology by using a website to compare geological formations with other figures, such as animals, plants, and the human body, just like you would with cloud shapes. Site visitors upload digital images of interesting formations from their mobile devices, along with GPS coordinates, formation details and a short blurb about the finder. A website visitor at home or in the field gets to vote and comment on whether the geologic formation really looks like a thumb, or a rabbit, or a castle. As an added bonus, visitors can keep track of the locations they find and update the park about resource concerns.
If you haven’t tried anything like this, I know what you’re thinking. Maintenance nightmare. Who will be assigned to monitor the image and content uploads? What about discretion and grammar? Is it sustainable? Will uploaded content meet interpretive standards?
Under the pressure of public trust, we fear losing control over “The Message.” The reality is that four letter words and malicious content may indeed find their way into our cyber-exhibits. But if a site like this motivates visitors to explore the resource and inspires stewardship, so what?
The Internet “web of life” feeds on rapidity, mutability, and technological advancement. Images, ideas, and information are revisited, revised, re-digested, redesigned and reprogrammed at speeds that easily exceed any government employee buried under a mountain of standards, regulations, staffing, and funding issues. But ultimately, mobile technology can empower our audiences. Using mobile media, we can provide a forum for their funny and serious, traditional and extraordinary, intellectual and emotional connections to the resource. What’s more interpretive than that?
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Great article. It seems that, just like other technologies, mobile communication devices can either be abused or become great assets, and fighting against popular tools seems to decrease the chance of connecting with groups of people. However, I still ask the Scouts I volunteer with to leave their MP3 players in the car during hikes and engage each other and their natural surroundings. Perhaps my attitude would change if their toys were used to facilitate their engagement.
The idea of controlling the message is interesting in contemporary society. There is so much information available through research and especially in opinion that many types of “experts” are sought after today if any do exist any longer. In the field of interpretation it seems that everyone becomes a type of expert once they have experienced a site, learned a history and felt a personal connection to resources.