The iMuse Virtual Museum: towards a cultural education platform

In the recent years, there is an extremely growing interest for the digitalization of museums through the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). A virtual museum platform, named iMuse is presented in this paper. The platform aims to enhance museum visits, assist visitors navigate inside the museum and to provide access to multimedia content using the recent advances in Web, RFIDs and communication technologies. In more detail, the iMuse Virtual Museum is based on three components: Mobile Tour, Virtual Presenter and Virtual Wing. The iMuse Mobile Tour application consists of a tour guide system. It utilizes UHF RFID technology to enrich museum visiting experience, through free style tours, pre-defined tours, interactive educational games and a group support service. The iMuse Virtual Presenter application is a web platform for delivering multimedia presentation to groups of visitors. Its objective is to enhance cultural knowledge discovery by increasing access to museums´ digital information, using rich media content (text, images, video and sound). The iMuse Virtual Wing comprise a user-aware virtual museum environment that creates and presents a virtual representation of the museum, providing multimedia content through specialized filtering methods. iMuse platform is successfully utilized to enhance educational programs and improve cultural understanding by connecting presentations with interactive games and guided tours.