NCMA Explore

camille tewell Project Manager, NCMA Explore

The NCMA is excited to share the release of NCMA Explore, an immersive educational resource for middle school students that gamifies learning around ancient civilizations.

NCMA Explore features a virtual Museum Park and gallery buildings as well as high-resolution 3-D models of ancient works from the People’s Collection. The artifacts are situated in contextualized environments that encourage curiosity and prompt students to explore and deepen their understanding through object-based investigation. Many museums have educational websites for children; NCMA Explore is not a website in the conventional sense. Rather, it’s a dynamic, interactive, game-based space where students engage with both the NCMA’s collection and standards from the social studies curriculum in ways that are self-motivating and fun.

Currently, the resource is in the pilot stage, with half of the content developed and released to the public. When fully complete, NCMA Explore will feature a total of six locations from around the globe, including ancient Peru, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Nigeria.

NCMA Explore fits perfectly into my overall curriculum and learning goals for my students.

It is important to me that my students have the opportunity to search for answers and experience the cultures we discuss in class, and NCMA Explore offers the perfect platform for such a venture.

Overall, the students loved it! They had a blast just exploring—this is a fantastic tool.

NCMA Explore is at the cutting edge of museum informatics and digital humanities. We look to peer-reviewed and published historical and archaeological scholarship and use the latest and most accurate data possible as the basis for building reconstructions of historical sites. It may not be possible to know exactly what a 3,000-year-old pharaoh’s tomb looked like at the time, but NCMA Explore comes about as close as it’s possible to get.

—JEFFREY POMERANTZ, Principal Investigator, Proximal LLC

NCMA Explore is revolutionizing the way middle school students learn about ancient civilizations and engage with social studies, humanities, and arts education. This initiative allows for a broad exploration of immersive XR technologies and incorporates virtual reality, augmented reality, photogrammetry, 3-D printing, and game-based learning to provide a truly interactive experience for learners. It’s exciting to see students step back in time and explore ancient 3-D objects, monuments, and cities in a way that was previously impossible.

One of the most stimulating aspects of NCMA Explore is its dynamic design. Users can admire works from different angles, zoom in, and spark their curiosity to connect with other areas of knowledge. For those who cannot visit us in person, NCMA Explore offers an immersive way to discover the People’s Collection.

—ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ LÓPEZ, Research Curator of Ancient American Collection

—MIKE CUALES, XR Producer, LEVR Studios LLC

Educational resources such as NCMA Explore are important mission-driven projects that rely on support from people and organizations who value the Museum and its work. Please consider donating to the NCMArts Fund at qrco.de/ncmaartsdonation