First Ever Google Hangout With A Curator

Here is a photo of the man from the MOSI museum who led us on a tour.

Recently in class we did a Google hangout chat with a man who works at Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England. To prep for this discussion we did a website investigation, watched a video from a museum curator, learned vocab for the machines we would be focusing on, and drafted questions for our curator. First, in our website search our class was given several websites about industrialization and the machines in Europe and we researched them. Second, watched a video from Jamie the man whom we had the video chat with he took us on a brief tour of the museum and he gave us some insight on how the process worked from turning cotton to cloth. In this video he gave us a couple vocab words. These words were things like hopper feeder scutcher, flubbing, draw frame, roving and many others.  I had almost no clue what any of these words were until the video. Finally, we drafted questions. This was vital because it would have been very awkward if he asked for questions and we all stared at him with a blank face.

After sitting through the chat with Jamie I learned that the textile process was a long, dangerous and tedious process. I could not imagine myself sitting down at my machine and feeding cotton through a hole for ten hours a day. Also, I learned how dirty of a job was. One of the most memorable stats Jamie gave was the fact that there was one toilet for 125 people. When I heard this I was shocked. One toilet for 125 people is absurd. In my house we have two bathrooms for five people and we still fight over it! Jamie then went on to talk about how people throw their waste into the street. When there is human waste in the streets that cannot be good for overall health. As for the growth of the industry Jamie made it clear that over time the process became a lot faster. For example when people started with the handloom and then worked their way up to the power loom the process was made a lot faster. One impact that industrialization had on families was that families lost a source of income once they were no longer able to sell cloth that they made out of their homes with handlooms once the power loom was invented. This caused some families major financial trouble. When Jamie talked about his job specifically he said that he enjoyed being able to inform others about such a very important time period.

Overall, sitting through this Google hangout session with Jamie really helped me further understand industrialization. I enjoyed being able to get information from someone who studies what we learn almost everyday, but I wish we had a better internet connection so he wasn’t as choppy. I would 100% do this again.  

Here are links to our discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2elcPIzAFTw&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLZpk0hCXHA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD2DO6_We6c&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya0rK67qosw&feature=youtu.be