OOKL, a handheld multimedia guide developed by Science.Ecology.Art Limited (the SEA), is also taking interactivity in an interesting new direction.
The guide, currently in use at UK-based venues including Whipsnade Zoo, the National Maritime Museum and Kew Gardens, acts as a virtual note-taking device aimed at school groups. Using a Nokia smartphone, students can view photos and text about a venue's objects, as well as listen to audio.
They can also take photos of objects and make their own notes and audio recordings, all of which are saved onto a website that students can access back in the classroom, where they can edit their collection into a presentation and view their classmates' work.
Because venue staff can upload text, photo and audio content to the guide themselves via a website, OOKL can also work as a substitute for a traditional multimedia or audioguide, the SEA's Dan Medicoff said. "However, it's aimed at venues that can't afford to buy audioguides, which need expensive content and are expensive to adapt when the collections change, or venues that don't like the idea of audioguides because they tend to put visitors into a slightly passive state, similar to happens when you watch TV."
The SEA has just completed an OOKL iPhone application aimed at the public with a more adult look and feel. "You're learning, but not so obviously," Medicoff added. In the future, he hopes to add a number of new features, including a map view, a cross-venue objects search, and 'crowdsourcing' - visitors, academics, volunteers and friends of venues can create content about objects and 'push' it to the venue, which edits the content and publishes it. "It's like Wikipedia, but exclusively about objects in spaces," he said.
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