Frequently Asked Questions

The Digital Museum of Learning is a global online museum that features virtual exhibitions, interactive stories, and educational resources about the history and future of learning. Our exhibitions are designed to inspire visitors of all ages, especially children ages 4-12 and their educators. The Digital Museum is an initiative of the Jacobs Foundation. It is a free resource available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Our online exhibitions are carefully curated collections of stories that explore exciting educational topics. We partner with educational museums around the world to digitize their art and artifacts and bring them to life in interactive stories. Each story offers an interactive resource to explore and spark curiosity, followed by fun, bite-sized information, engaging quizzes, and teaching resources such as worksheets and videos.

Our resourceful team works with the Jacobs Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland. The Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, is home to the Digital Museum of Learning. We curate stories and collaborate with experts around the world to inspire wonder and curiosity in learners of all ages.

We launched our first exhibition on environmental education in the spring of 2023, with more stories and languages still to come. We plan to launch a second exhibition in the spring of 2024. Our goal is to bring you two exhibitions every year. You can vote on future exhibition topics in our poll on the Exhibitions page.

You can access the Digital Museum of Learning by visiting our website, www.museumoflearning.org, and clicking on the “Exhibitions” tab. From there, you can explore our virtual exhibits and interactive stories. All content on our platform is free.

The Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, is home to the Digital Museum of Learning. Located in the beautiful Jacobs Haus, we regularly host events and exhibitions that explore the fascinating world of education.

The interactive stories bring the history and future of learning to life on your screen. Stories are designed to spark the curiosity of children ages 4 to 12. They are organized into four sections:

1. Explore: Interactive content to explore a digital artifact and spark curiosity

2. Explain: Fun and insightful bite-sized information for all ages

3. Engage: Fun quizzes to test knowledge and understanding

4. Resources: Additional worksheets, videos, and links to external resources to make lessons even more enriching and engaging

Exhibitions are a collection of stories about an exciting educational topic with subject areas related to science, technology, history, art, culture, and more. We delve into the rich tapestry of educational history, from exploring the wonders of our planet to the invention of the kindergarten. There’s always something new and exciting to discover in the world of education!

Each story is a complete learning resource in its own right, designed to engage and inspire learners of all ages and abilities. With interactive elements that pique curiosity; fun, bite-sized information; and engaging quizzes, the stories offer a rich and immersive learning experience. We also provide teaching resources such as worksheets, videos, and links to online educational materials to help educators make the most of our stories in their classrooms. You can browse all learning resources by clicking the “Resources” tab in the main navigation.

To add a story to your favorites, log in to your account on the Digital Museum of Learning website, or create an account if you do not already have one. Navigate to the story and click the heart icon to add the story to your list of favorites. To view your favorite stories, go to the Teacher Zone and select “Favorites.” Your saved stories should appear in the favorites section.

The Teacher Zone is a free customization tool for teachers who register for a free account on the Digital Museum of Learning website. In the Teacher Zone, you can tailor learning journeys to your lesson plans and monitor students’ progress.

Using our interactive stories as a starting point, you can edit and customize them to create a truly engaging learning journey for your students. With the ability to add additional questions and resources, or hide certain information, you can help your students focus on specific aspects of the story.

Your learning journeys come complete with personalized certificates, scores, and progress bars to keep students motivated and on track.

Once you have created your learning journey, you can publish and share it with your students via a unique link or a QR code. All your students have to do is enter a name.

The Dashboard allows you to keep track of your student’s activities as they work through your learning journeys and monitor their scores and questions.

An account allows you to customize stories and create your own learning journey to share with your class. Login is required to save your favorite stories and to create, edit, share, and monitor customized learning journeys.

An account on the Digital Museum of Learning website is free. It ensures that you can easily access your learning journeys anytime, from anywhere. You can also save your drafts and pick up where you left off, making it easy to create engaging and effective learning experiences for your students.

Yes, students can access stories without a login. When a teacher shares a learning journey with a student, they must enter a name and the password provided. The name can be a nickname.

Teachers can monitor learners’ activity in the learning journey based on the given nickname. They can view their progress (number of stories visited), quiz scores, and download the completion certificate. In addition, if a child adds a question at the end of the learning journey, the teacher can see that question on the Teacher Zone dashboard and use it to prompt a class discussion. Learners can also anonymously share their reactions to the stories, such as “surprising” or “thoughtful.”

You can let your students explore the exhibitions and stories on their own or create a learning journey tailored to your class.

If you want to share a story from one of our exhibitions, click “Share.” You can share a link to the entire page or let your students jump to the Explore, Explain, Engage sections, or the learning resources of a story. We also provide an option to share a story directly on MS Teams or Google Classroom.

If you want to tailor a story to your lesson, you can create a learning journey in the Teacher Zone in 3 easy steps:

1. Customize your learning journey: Select stories and add additional questions and resources to fit your lesson plan. 

2. Share it with your class: Publish and share your learning journey with a link or QR code. All students need to do is enter a name or nickname.

3. Track student activity: Track and monitor your students’ activities. The journeys will have extra features including personalized certificates, scores, and a progress bar to keep students engaged and motivated!

The stories are designed to spark the curiosity of children ages 4 to 12 and up, but learners of all ages and abilities can explore them. Some stories may be more appropriate for older children, depending on the topic. Stories are written in simple language.

To create a learning journey, create a Teacher Zone account and click “Create a Journey.” If you want to mix stories from different exhibitions, you can create a learning journey from an existing exhibition or from a blank template. You can select stories to add to your learning journey by clicking “Add.” To remove a story from the selection, click “Remove.”

Drag and drop the stories in the order you want them. Alternatively, you can click the three dots in the upper right corner of each story to move it up or down. This menu also allows you to select one story as a cover image for your learning journey or to remove a story from the journey.

We collaborate with experts and organizations worldwide to bring our interactive stories to life on screen. Our museum partners provide the artifacts and artwork that form the basis of our stories, but we also work with educators, libraries, universities, and cultural organizations to create engaging learning experiences. If you are interested in partnering with us, you can contribute artifacts and resources to help unlock the rich history and future of learning.

We partner with museums globally to digitize their most treasured artworks and artifacts and transform them into engaging interactive stories for children and visitors of all ages. When you partner with us, we cover all the costs of creating a digital interactive asset of your artwork or artifact. We believe strongly in openness and sharing. We aim to license our work under a Creative Commons license (CC BY) to make museum knowledge accessible and reusable for every classroom worldwide.

It’s simple. You can contact us directly through our contact form and inquire about partnership opportunities.

We are a museum and part of the Jacobs Foundation, a private foundation based in Switzerland. Our mission is to empower educators and increase the impact of their work by bringing the history and future of learning to life on a screen. Becoming a partner costs nothing other than your time and commitment to helping children thrive.