We had a lovely Christmas lunch yesterday with staff and volunteers from our 6 different museums – Prestongrange, John Muir’s Birthplace, Dunbar Town House, Musselburgh Museum, the John Gray Centre and North Berwick. Dunbar Town House and the John Gray Centre are due to open in spring 2012, with North Berwick still in development. It was lovely to have volunteers there too, and as today is Museum Volunteer Day (or so Twitter tells me), I should really take the chance to thank all our fantastic volunteers for the work they do. (You can now follow us on Twitter – @ELMuseumService)
So, as you might guess with two new museums opening soon, we’ve been busy getting everything ready for them. I’ve had great fun researching and buying toys for a timeline in the John Gray Centre which will include things like a 1950s Barbie, Gameboy and Zoetrope. I think the other staff just think I’ve been ordering my Christmas presents as there always seems to be a toy in the mailbox for me in the morning!
I’ve also been working on a couple of different projects which use Glow as part of the Creative Learning Network. Glow is an online network for teachers and pupils across Scotland to use to share resources. We’ve been hosting Glow meets, which is like video conferencing, but for school classes. With Pencaitland Primary and Macmerry Primary, they shared their adverts for inventions across Glow which they’d come up with after visiting Prestongrange Museum. The pupils had a great time waving to each other across the webcams and had great fun communicating across the internet!
We also had a Roman soldier from the Antonine Guard who spoke to classes in Musselburgh Burgh Primary, and we recorded it so others could watch it online. The Roman soldier kept the pupils on their toes by getting them to act out different marches and Roman shouts. The webcam became a bit wobbly at times!
Anyway, I’m off to Aberlady Primary with some Victorian Inventions this afternoon so I better go get them loaded up into my car, not quite sure if the mangle will fit in my boot!