Museum websites give students opportunities to pore over the world's priceless collections and exhibits from the comfort of home or the classroom. A museum app can be one of the most effective and affordable ways to engage each and every visitor. Many museum apps and websites provide imagery, text descriptions, audio, and even video for scalable storytelling.
These museum apps and websites offer an immense collection of primary and secondary resources for research into the depths of history, science, culture, and society, both in the U.S. and around the world. Many also feature lesson plans, interactives, and other resources aimed specifically at classrooms, making it easier to connect curriculum to museum artifacts and documents. Teachers should also make sure to check out the professional development resources and field trip opportunities -- both remote and in-person -- these sites often offer.
Here is the list of museum apps and websites to get the users engaged, immersed and excited.
1. Asian Art Museum
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's educational website offers 91 lessons and activities, 326 videos, images of 257 pieces of art, and many more resources for educators and students. Its content incorporates and builds upon the museum's collection, which includes pieces from countries ranging from Turkey to India and China from a more than 6,000-year period.
2. Smartify: Museum & Art Guide
Free and easy to use for visitors, the content displayed is as simple for the museums to maintain: the app can be set up to automatically pull data from existing museum databases, YouTube, Wikipedia and other online sources. Museum's are also able to see which pieces visitors are scanning alongside dwell times within the museum - opening up opportunities to increase information or expand collections based on visitor analytics. Far from hindering museum visitors, Smartify is showing how mobile phones can be integrated in museums to provide an all-round more explorative, in depth and enriching experience.
The app enabled visitors to explore the museum at their own pace with greater autonomy. Rather than following a set path, visitors can avoid crowds, discover hidden gems and save artworks for later viewing. This is particularly important in studio museums which often have limited space for wall labels.
3. California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences site brings the resources and experience of San Francisco's museum into the classroom. Its Explore Science section delves thoroughly into science topics such as animals, plants, the Earth, ecosystems, and more. It highlights scientists as well as important current issues and science news. Visitors can access multimedia collections, lectures, and Academy research, as well as fascinating curriculum with a lot of depth.
4. The British Museum, London
This iconic museum located in the heart of London allows virtual visitors to tour the Great Court and discover the ancient Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies. You can also find hundreds of artifacts on The Museum of the World interactive website, a collaboration between The British Museum and Google Cultural Institute.
5. National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a valuable resource for any educator to bookmark. The website provides both an overview of the actual museum (in Washington, D.C., on the National Mall) for potential visitors as well as a satisfying online experience that opens up online access to numerous resources to support the teaching of African-American history. The site is easy to navigate, and users can search the large collection of historical artifacts or view the online exhibitions (presentations of objects from the museum's collections), stories (curator-led and contextualized tours of topics), and videos.
6. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website is the online presence of the well-known and well-respected pair of museums in and near Washington, D.C. It includes information on visiting the museums in person, but most of the site consists of current, past, and upcoming online exhibits, as well as object collections and educational resources like activities, learning guides, archives, online programs, virtual field trips, and a multimedia gallery.
7. Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture is both a website and an iOS or Android app that provides free access to art, culture, and historical collections from around the world. The site is well-organized and easy to navigate. It allows users to explore by specific museums' collections or themes, and to filter by movement, artist, historical event, historical figure, medium, and more. Some resources can be browsed by geographic location on a map, by dominant color, or in a timeline, allowing students to easily compare works from the same time period.
8. 9/11 Museum Audio Guide
Museum offers the 9/11 Museum Audio Guide app, which features stories from the day of the attacks and recovery at Ground Zero. It also presents details of the Museum’s archeological elements and the architectural designs of the Memorial and Museum. The app is available in various languages.
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