To complete our survey of
museums serving distance audiences, we will now look at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, a landmark historic house museum in
northern Virginia not far from Washington, DC.
Mount Vernon
is one of the oldest historic house museums in the nation, but it is quite
modern and up-to-date in its offerings for distance audiences:
Videoconferencing
& Broadcasts
As discussed here,
videoconferencing is an effective way for museums to reach out to long-distance
audiences, vividly bringing the experience of the museum and live interactions
with museum experts to audiences in the comfort of their own classrooms,
nursing homes, etc. Mount
Vernon offers the "Face
to Face" videoconferencing program in which students talk with
first-person interpreters playing various figures from Washington’s life—such as Martha Washington,
George’s physician Dr. Craik, or his housekeeper—filmed against a backdrop of
the estate. There is also a storytelling
program for grades 1-2 in which a costumed interpreter tells stories about Mount Vernon in the
style of Aesop’s Fables. Each 30-minute
program costs $100, can be customized to the grade level of participants, uses
either IP or IDSN connections, and comes with teaching resources sent in
advance to help incorporate videoconference programs into the curriculum.
Mount
Vernon has also
partnered with the Fairfax Network to offer schools free satellite-delivered Distance Learning Broadcasts
about GW-related topics ranging from “Shaping the Presidency” to
“Slavery at Mount Vernon.” Teachers can get free DVDs of previously
broadcast programs as well.
Teacher and Student
Resources
Aside from the above program collaborations, Mount Vernon also has a
number of educational resources that can be accessed at any time on their
website. For teachers, there are lesson
plans and a Teacher
Support Facebook Group. For students
researching George Washington, there are resources such as a Meet George Washington
section of the website with timelines and biographical information, a library
with online Digital
Collections that include many primary sources, and even an Ask
Mount Vernon contact box to which anyone can submit questions about George
and his times.
Virtual Tours, Exhibits, and Other
Online Interactives
Mount Vernon’s
extensive website allows one to see much of the estate and collections with
just a few clicks of the mouse. There’s
a Virtual
Mansion Tour, an interactive Estate Map, and two
online “museums”: a smaller, more interactive Online Museum with four
“exhibits” about George Washington incorporating objects from the collection,
and a more extensive eMuseum
in which one can view all of the various objects of the MV collections, from
furniture to weapons, each with a photograph, basic information, and a
paragraph or so of context.
For elementary school-age “digital native” distance
audiences, Mount Vernon
has even created some interactive educational games about George Washington’s
life and times at a sub-site called George
Washington's World for Kids:
Mount Vernon
also has its own blog, YouTube Channel, Twitter, and Facebook Page, connecting
with distance audiences via social media.
