Internet and culture: The Metropolitan Museum launched unique Internet project for kids

12 October 2015
Source: MARCH

The Metropolitan Museum (USA) launched a unique Internet project for children #MetKids. Now little art lovers have their funny website of the museum, created for kids.

Now, young visitors can wandering on a painted virtual museum and learn about the interesting facts.

Now figures include 125 works of art. However, the curators of the project promise that their number is constantly growing.

Interactive map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can be scaled, approaching the interesting fragments.

Each item wound up kind of card in which you can see the real picture of the subject, to learn a funny story about him, to get answers to basic questions - "What is it made of?", "When?" "Where?", "How to find it in the museum?". In addition, the card is supplemented by three exciting parts: "Open", "Present" and "Create". The first unit provides new knowledge about the subject, the history of its occurrence. The second unit plunges into the situation to realize the value of the object, its functional significance. Final block calls to include imagination and create something on their own hands.

In the section "Travel in a time machine" the child can choose what he would like to learn using multiple filters for the time period and geographical topics. Having selected filters, the user starts the machine that transports it to the object in accordance with the parameters. This is another interesting technique, which took the team of the Metropolitan Museum to introduce kids to the game format with the richness and diversity of the collection.  

In the section "Question-Answer" kids play the role of a reporter and ask questions that are interesting for them, and curators, experts, scientists, museum educators respond intelligibly.

In addition to these main sections the children's version of the website offers to create their own works of art from the online master classes, spend time together with the museum in domestic festivals and events, choose the family program of visits and study the history of the world's largest art museum.