Zeke Johnson
The Lost Museum website offers interesting insights into digital exhibits and what they offer teachers and students alike. The introduction video creates an interest in visitors to the site, while the subsequent activity and virtual tour expand on that interest, and provide answers to the questions digital visitors may have. The tour was fascinating as it allows visitors to explore a physical space in the virtual world. This concept is a continuation of the topics we have been discussing all semester in Digital Humanities on the importance of digital spaces in the physical world. Augmented reality has been discussed as a possible teaching tool, and a virtual museum seems to fit right in with this concept, but at the same time kind of inverts it. By this I mean that a projection of a physical space onto the computer screen allows for a museum tour from the comfort of your own home.
This also has educational value especially here in the US. where schools can be some what underfunded. Instead of going on a field trip to an actual museum, classes could theoretically take a virtual tour instead, that way the school could save money, and who doesn’t like saving money.
It is interesting to see the many places that have been lost to history, and the recreations of these places in a virtual space. It lends credence to the idea that history is never truly lost until collective memory has completely vanished, and the lost museum is a good example of how history can be preserved well after its physical components have vanished to the ages.