Oswald and the Objects (Esa ja Esineet)

Thesis abstract

2010-04-13T21:09:00.001+03:00

The Finnish Design Museum currently offers informal educational activities for children at daycares. However, most of these activities happen at the museum’s premises in Helsinki and consequently only the daycares in the capital area can benefit from them. The difficulty of taking small children on long distance journeys restricts the access of other daycares.

This thesis describes the process of conceiving and designing an online service – Oswald and the Objects – that addresses the obstacle of distance in the access of daycares to Design Museum’s educational activities for children. The service encourages daycares to use social media and social interaction tools such as online forums, video, photo and document sharing services to connect and engage in conversation with the museum’s education team and other daycares, sharing their learning experiences, obstacles and suggestions.

The design choices and details of Oswald and the Objects are explained and documented by introducing the current specific needs of its audience, analysis of similar online services in Finland and abroad and by reflection on the experiences gained by tests conducted with an early prototype of the service. The results of the process indicate that by combining social media services, multiple media types and meaningful activities a promising alternative for increasing the reach of museum educational activities can be created. The experiences gained throughout the development of the service and the initial reactions to the final implementations indicate that daycare educators in Finland are receptive to this type of services and recognize its relevance. In order to get the most out of the service, it is important that the background experience and practices of educators in using digital media and online social interaction tools are taken into consideration when planning the several media elements of the service. However, the museum must still contemplate alternative and complementary materials to online media to ensure the access of the largest possible number of daycares to its educational activities.

Read the full thesis in Slideshare!

2010-04-12T21:20:00.000+03:00

Oswald and the Objects

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Briefly about my thesis

2009-10-24T21:20:00.003+03:00

The Finnish Design Museum currently offers informal educational activities for children at daycares but they mostly happen at the museum's premises in Helsinki. This is a major restriction factor for daycares located outside the capital area, since it's not practical to take small children on long distance travels.

In this MA thesis I address this problem by proposing an online service to improve the access of Finnish daycare centers to the educational activities offered by the Design Museum. I aim at two main goals:

Goal one is to help Design Museum to create and distribute online resources for informal learning activities which can happen at the daycare centers and never require the physical presence of the children at the museum. My objective is to build a website where Design Museum can share the resources with daycare educators. This website is now in test phase and can be visited at:
http://www.esajaesineet.com

Goal two is to generate a dialogue between the museum and daycares and between children and educators in different daycares. My objective is that daycare centers share their experiences and the results from the learning activities (such as photos, videos or short stories) with Design Museum and other daycares by using a set of existing social media services and tools. The materials are being shared at:
http://connectedday.com

To achieve these goals I have explored answers to the following research questions:

What kind of online services can be created to improve the access of daycare centers to museum's educational activities?

How can social media be integrated to improve communication between daycares and museums and benefit the whole experience?

I believe that the museum will benefit from receiving the experiences shared by the daycare educators and children for they will give valuable feedback that can be used to develop their education services further. Daycares will benefit from using the service for it gives a meaningful reason to introduce children to activities involving online digital media tools and initiate them in digital media literacy.

Finally I would like to state that this thesis is not about the methods and activities of teaching. I do not discuss the value of the museum's learning resources and activities. During this project I have worked together with members of the Design Museum's education team, who have focused on all the pedagogic aspects.

Motivation and background projects

2009-10-24T20:45:00.009+03:00

In the autumn of 2007 a team of researchers and students from the MediaLab of the University of Art and Design (1) and a team of staff from the education service of the Design Museum in Helsinki (2) decided to collaborate together on a project called The Secret Life of Objects. The project aimed at finding new ways to discuss design objects with different groups of visitors, using several types of media.

(1) From MediaLab TaiK, Andrea Botero, Mariana Salgado and Diana de Sousa
(2) From Design Museum, Hanna Kapanen, Mirjam Kraft, Anna Louhelainen and Leena Svinhufvud

One focus of this project was to find new methods to discuss design objects with five year-old children, introducing them at the same time to digital media tools. The teams created a pilot workshop format initially intended to happen at the daycare centers' premises and to be conducted by the museum's educators.

A series of five different workshops were produced and tested. They were named Esa ja Esineet, (in English, Oswald and the Objects). Esa is a puppet who dreams about mysterious objects, as you can see from the video bellow.

After this experience we agreed to turn Esa ja Esineet into a service that uses online media to provide educational activities from Design Museum to daycare centers from all Finland. Esa ja Esineet is now an autonomous project, and the practical part of my MA thesis. The project is now a prototype in testing phase.