'Museum in a Box' Brings Interactive Museum Collections to Classrooms via mentalfloss.com

What would the world be like if you could bring important museums — all over the world — right into your home, school or office? It would be a wonderful world, I think. Too many museum exhibits stay locked to one location or in dusty backstage storage areas where few people can enjoy and learn from them. This is just one way to help give access to anyone who desires it. — Douglas

Museums hold a wealth of information, but they're not always accessible to everyone. Visiting a museum takes time, money, and opportunity. Even if you make it to a museum, most collections are so vast that only a tiny fraction of the collection is available to view. But a new initiative aims to make it easier for museums to reach schools and communities outside the exhibition gallery.

Museum in a Box is essentially a mini interactive exhibit that can be sent out to schools and other organizations that serve kids. Each box comes with a Raspberry Pi computer, a speaker, an amplifier, and a near-field communication (NFC) reader—like the kind that lets you pay with your phone at retail checkouts. Museums and cultural institutions can then add their own objects for kids to learn about using that technology, whether it's 3D-printed versions of statues from the museum's collections, postcards, puzzles, or anything else curators think kids might want to see. Students can place these objects on top of the box, triggering the NFC reader to start playing a recording related to the object.

Read 'Museum in a Box' Brings Interactive Museum Collections to Classrooms via mentalfloss.com

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