Museum+Box

What is a Museum Box?
Museum Box is a free, online presentation tool that allows users to compile images, text, video and other forms of media into a box, much like a museum curator would use to collect items for display in a museum. As an alternative to other presentation methods and research papers, users can curate and collect information to support arguments, describe events and people, and represent ideas. Museum Box offers educators the opportunity to digress from traditional presentation tools and incorporate editing and research skills seamlessly into projects. Examples of user-created Museum Boxes can be viewed in the [|gallery].
 * Collect images, videos, and documents to be used as artifacts
 * Students can create 21st Century "digital" dioramas.
 * Best of all, it's **FREE**  to register and get started!

 Museum Box provides you with the tools to showcase descriptions of an event, person, historical period of time, or anything you can imagine into a virtual box! Maybe your class is studying Henry VIII, Solar Systems, Picasso, or even geometry, Museum Box will allow your students to present their research, their case (for or against), and their opinions about various topics.

The Museum Box website also offers the following [|free resources]: a gallery of boxes to view from other students, guidance for teachers (registration and creating student accounts), curriculum areas in which Museum Box can be supported, and more!

I especially liked that students have many options of which form of media to include for each cube within their box: images, text, sound, videos, files, and links. They can even upload their own audio files! How great to have them as the expert guide through their Museum Box -- to differentiate the activity, students could write a formal piece to podcast their work. Others could select from a gallery of preloaded sound effects.

So, how does it work?

It's SIMPLE! Once you’ve started a new Museum Box, you will be guided to add images, text, sounds, videos, files, links, AND you can even change the color and size of your box!

If your school is not available in the list you should register here:[| http://museumbox.e2bn.org/creator/register/] (if you already have an account for Myths and Legends Story Creator you do not need to register again, you can use the same details)

Once that is done (your details will be checked by an E2BN administrator, this may involve phoning your school, please allow 5 days for this process to complete) and you have received your password your students can then either register through the DiscoveryBox application or you can create student user accounts yourself in the admin area. Students only need to register or be registered once and can use their student user accounts at home or at school to load and save work within the DiscoveryBox application. //MAKE SURE YOU DONT GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO STUDENTS, it allows YOU teacher access to moderate and approve their work)//


 * Creating individual student user accounts:

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">To create student user accounts go here [] and use your username and password to login. Click "Manage Users" then "Add New User", complete the simple form. You can create one account per student (this is helpful if you know to whom the account belongs so you can identify the user when moderating their work) or one account for a group or class, whichever you prefer. The account details can then be given to the student(s) and used when asked for a Log in within the DiscoveryBox application (__[]__).


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Bulk uploading student user accounts:

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">You can also upload an Excel Spreadsheet, create a new spreadsheet with "login name" in column A (e.g. student1) and "password" (e.g. student1password) in column B.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">If you want your students to register their own accounts get them to load DiscoveryBox Creator [] and click "Messages" (or anything that gets a login prompt) then "Join for Free" if they select your school from the list on the right when they are entering their details YOU will be able to moderate their work when they finish and submit it within the application.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">NOTE:: If students do not select the correct school when they register then E2BN will moderate their work, this can take up to 3 weeks. If a student makes a mistake and registers for the wrong school get them to re-register.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">To moderate the work of a student you must first login to the admin area (same link as above: []). If there are boxes created and submitted by your students (using the "Submit" function in the DiscoveryBox application) available for review then they will be shown in the "Your pending Boxes" section on the left.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Click "View" in the row of the box that you wish to review and having reviewed all of the content within the box choose either:


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Approve**

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">If you approve a box it will go live on the DiscoveryBox website within your school or organisation's area. The author of the box will be also able to reload the box in the box creator. You may send a message to the user who created it if you choose this option.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Reject**

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">If you reject a box it will be returned to the author, alongside any message you choose to enter. The author will be able to load the box and make changes, or do any further work on it.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Edit**

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">If you choose to edit the box you can make amendments to the text and the audio attachments if necessary.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Delete**

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">The box will be permanently deleted, the user will not be able to load the box. Please remember that any work you approve goes live onto the website here__[| http://museumbox.e2bn.org/gallery/]__ so it is important to ensure it is suitable for publication.

==<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Watch This Video Tutorial to Help You Through the Set Up Process and Creating Your First Museum Box** ==

media type="youtube" key="U6fDRktWIGg" height="360" width="640"

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Examples and Resources
The best way to learn about setting up a Museum Box is to look at what others have already done.

Cold War

History Project

Triangles!

The Slave Trade

Cruelty at the Zoo - A Debate

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Ideas for Using Museum Box in the Classroom
>
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Language Arts **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Showcasing favorite authors (doing each author on a cube - displaying different pieces of work on each author's cube)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Featuring a novel (cube examples could be: author, setting, plot, other works, etc)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">diving into the setting (each cube could depict a place mentioned in the story)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">character cubes (each cube could identify a different trait or each cube could contain examples from the story that identify different traits)
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Math **
 * Cubes could represent a culmination of a math unit - each cube could represent a sequential concept in math
 * Distributive property (examples and non examples, definition, how it's applied), associative, identity...
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Social Studies **
 * Historical figures
 * Events in history
 * Economic trends
 * Types of governments
 * Countries, 5 themes...
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Science **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">water cycle
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">predator and prey
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">elements of the periodic table
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">geological time
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">types of rocks
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">weather and erosion
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">branches of science
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">careers in science
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">famous scientists

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Things to Think About Before Using Museum Box

 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Classroom teachers need to sign up ahead of time to be able to create accounts for their students. If your school is not already on their list, you will need to set it up, then wait for a confirmation from them before creating student accounts. This took less than a week, but is definitely something to consider before creating the assignment.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Give the students very clear, specific directions to ensure they develop “research” and not just a compilation of unrelated images. The quality of the museum box depends on the focus they are given.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">It can be a bit “clunky” when setting up. Spend time getting accounts set up and playing with it before you are ready to use it with students.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Plan on showing them how to use it with a projector so they can see what you are doing. It may require some modeling on your part.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">You may want to have students preload their flash drives with images that they plan on using for the activity.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Try to have at least a 50 minute class period to allow students to explore all this site has to offer.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Museum Box is a great way for students to visually organize all of the information that they have gathered and or created about a particular topic. While the tool was designed with history students in mind, it can certainly be used in other content areas. For example, you could have students in a biology class gather and display virtual artifacts about animals and their habitats.

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Use this space to post your questions, comments, and ideas about using Museum Box.
=<span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">OK, so it's time to get CREATIVE! =
 * 1) ==<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Create a Museum Box that you might use in your classroom. It could be something that you might want to use for an upcoming lesson or it could be something that you might set up as a template for students to use for a project. ==
 * 2) ==<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">When you have completed your Museum Box, you will be embedding or linking it to the "Shared Resources" page in this wiki. ==
 * 3) ==<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Post your questions, comments, discoveries, and ideas to the Discussion Section on this page. ==
 * 4) ==<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Have Fun and I hope you enjoy the process! ==