Last year the Digital Media department at Imperial War Museums (IWM) introduced a new museum-wide initiative called Computer Club. Its aim is to provide friendly, informal, fun, hands-on sessions for staff in a non-training like environment to get them excited about digital technology.
3. • Part of a Digital Transformation Strategy published in 2013
• At heart of strategy to raise staff’s digital capability
Embed digital instinctively in our work
Promote digital leadership across the organisation
Introduce new digital competences
Launch Computer Club
Digital Transformation
4. • An informal monthly lunchtime session
• Different from traditional training
• About communicating our enthusiasm for digital
• Not focussed on museum ‘work’
• Fun, enjoyable, hands-on, not be afraid
What is Computer Club?
47. • Sessions need careful planning
• Requires hardware/software
• Wifi that works
• People to run the sessions
• Can be viewed as additional work unless part of a wider
strategy
• Fitting it in with regular IT/skills development training?
Challenges
48. • Reach all staff
• It’s fun
• Not driven by projects
• Enables Digital team to ‘meet’ the museum
• Popularity increases through word of mouth
• Director General likes talking about it
• Staff asking for more sessions
Benefits
49. “Some of the best fun I have had at the museum in years.”
“I wanted to say how great this was! I learned something and it
was really fun too – don’t think there could have been a better
activity for helping boost cross team working.”
“I want to do it again - fantastic!”
“This was really fun. I was worried this was
going to be another boring afternoon of
training.”
“Long Live Computer Club!”
But we wanted to show him a different world. A world where he could make a movie with the tap of a finger.
A world where he could live out his rock star fantasies.
Or dream up the new Grand Theft Auto
And so we came up with Computer Club
Started with Twitter because we know that lots of people are talking about Twitter
Advertised first session on the Intranet
50 people responded – different departments, all levels. Because of the numbers we split the sessions into 3.
Then we had to figure out how to run the session
Day of session arrives
We used tablets that we had from a previous project
Expecting pain from the sign up procedure so made sure that we had lots of helpers from Digital Media
Wasn’t expecting:
People attending that had never used a tablet before
Didn’t know how to turn it on, unlock it, where the keyboard was
We struggled with wifi for 15 people in the room and pages not loading on the tablets and timing out.
We wasted a lot of time trying to get people signed up.
But we got through the session and got everyone to tweet, re-tweet, use a hashtag and follow someone.
So how did Jon do? He did great.
He signed up
He tweeted
And he (almost) used hashtag properly
At the end of the session, we gave everyone Computer Club stickers.
So we learnt lots from that first session.
So we sat down to brainstorm the next session. We were surprised in the previous session by the fact that so few staff members had used tablet devices before so we felt it was really important to give people a better tablet experience.
We came up with the idea of creating a short film using only an iPad – so filming, editing and publishing to YouTube a short film using only a tablet device.
We decided that we would use iMovie for the session because it has a really good iPad app that is purpose-built for the device and is very intuitive to use.
We ran 3 one hour sessions over the course of two weeks.
So for each session, we broke the group up into small teams. In the interest of keeping the barriers low and the good times high, we decided to use the iMovie trailer-maker.
The trailer-maker presents users with a series of shots – a storyboard essentially – that they must follow.
Once all the shots are completed, they are compiled into a fake movie trailer complete with music, sound effects and flashy graphics/
It was amazing to see what happened.
We gave the teams hardly any instruction at the beginning of the session – but a member of the Digital Media team stayed with each group to help them if they got stuck. But, by and large, they figured it out all by themselves.
After 45 minutes, they returned to the room. We turned the lights off and each team showed everyone else what they’d made – cinema style.