Visit iMuse in the RG spaces tent at East Reading Festival Sunday 14 June Palmer Park to play Splat Medusa on our iPads. Fun for all (warning – children are normally faster than adults!). Highest scores of the day win prizes. All entries put into a draw for extra prizes too. Art work by Addington School, Woodley, as part of the Ure Discovery project, 2012-13.
Visit RG spaces at East Reading Festival 14 June Palmer Park 12-6
Have fun trying out our iPads with interesting stuff that’s right here in East Reading – an artist in the Harris Garden, London Road Campus Heritage Trail, Greek wax tablet, a Ladybird book.
Learn how iMuse worked with local museums and schools to create these ‘miniapps’ and join iOpener to make your own trails.
iMuse & iOpener move to RG spaces
The iMuse and iOpener programmes run by the charity Access-Ability Communications Technology (AACT) are moving to RG spaces in Summer 2015. iMuse works with museums and galleries locally to seek lowcost ways of using mobile phones and tablets to make visits more fun and accessible for everyone. iOpener is experimenting with making online trails and encouraging people to make their own around Reading.
iOpener in Reading March 2015
iOpener in Reading is holding sessions in Town Hall Square 14 and 21 March. Visit iopener.org.uk for more info.
Ure Move Launch 14 June 2014
It is with great pleasure that the curators and student panel of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology invite you to attend the Grand Opening of Ure Move, an exciting project and exhibition we have developed with the charity Access-Ability Communication Technology (AACT) as part of Universities Week 2014.
We take this opportunity to celebrate the invaluable work of our University students and the pupils of 3 local schools (Addington School, Kendrick School and Maiden Erlegh School) who together created this original exhibition. The Grand Opening will include a private preview of the exhibition, which shows the Ure collection through new eyes. Guests will also have the opportunity to look around the collection, play with the interactive iPad application or have a go at making their own short stop motion animations. Activities should enthuse people of all ages and abilities.
Saturday 14th June starting at 4.30 pm.
Please RSVP at ure.education@reading.ac.uk.
Run 10K for AACT!
We have 3 places left in the British 10K Run, central London, 13 July 2014. Contact info@aact.org.uk and see link on our British 10K Run page
AACT/iMuse iPad webapp in Ure Museum for everyone to enjoy
Just come along during opening hours and ask to use an iPad – or you can go to the Library to see the material created by young people and use the iPad ‘wax tablet’- watch the animations and follow your guide, Sophie, Athena’s owl.
Another artist’s text-free mini-app planned
iMuse is working with artist, Jenny Halstead, to produce a low-cost mini-app for an in-exhibition iPad.
Jenny recently spent a year as Artist in Residence in the Harris Garden at the University of Reading, painting and drawing as the seasons changed. Her exhibition in the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, runs from 24 May to 30 June 2013.
Jenny has recorded her thoughts on each painting. Visitors will be able to see each painting both for real and on our iPad, where they can blow it up to look at detail down to the brushstroke, and tap to hear Jenny describing her reactions to each scene and her painting methods.
AACT’s special interest is in showing how such relatively simply implemented techniques can enhance an exhibition for everyone, particularly by communicating its meaning to those with sight impairment or who find reading text on labels difficult.
Though the iPad will be tethered on a cord for security, visitors will be able to pick it up to share what they find with companions, and it is hoped that this will further encourage communication between them.
Launch date for Ure Discovery exhibition set!
The Ure Discovery Arts Council England Project, in which AACT/iMuse is a partner alongside 2 mainstream schools and one special school, will have its exhibition officially launched on 15th June.
All will be welcome to this family-centred event, with an Greek-pot activity in aid of AACT, talks by the animator, Steve Simons, and the pupils who created the exhibition. And of course, the iMuse iPad trail led by Sophie the Owl!
Stanley Spencer Gallery goes live!
iMuse partner, the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, has gone live today with its first AACT iPad installed for visitor use.
Chrissy Rosentahl, volunteer and project lead in the Gallery, ruminates on the practicalities of using a shared iPad in real life.
We launched today in the Gallery …. Valentine’s Day! Much love…. I have spent more hours cutting up tennis balls, sticking Velcro to the floor, unsticking Velcro from the floor and scratching my head about security than I have spent sorting out content – but I suppose that’s the point of the exercise.
Working with iMuse has been great – because it has inpsired us and motivated us to use the iPads in the Gallery to deliver extra content. Now we have to see if we have delivered something our visitors actually want.
I have just been training today’s Custodian to unplug and wake up the iPad and to enable Guided Access. That has not been without its problems. For fingers unused to touch screen ‘click the Home Button three times’ is not as simple as it sounds…. Do you do it with a finger nail slowly, with the pad of the finger quickly…?? It depends…..
I have written instructions – which are probably more confusing than necessary as I have tried to cover all possible problems – so it’s back to the drawing board on that – I have left the Custodian in the Gallery with the feedback forms (simple) and their first visitor (a woman in her 70’s) – who immediately showed interest and picked it up….
More later…