ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

At 23:57 14/11/2006, Eric Siegel wrote:

>Hello, Ian, Nina, and all:
>
>Are you familiar with the PIE (Playful Invention and Exploration)
>project?  It was MIT + a consortium of museums that got funding from
>NSF to do a range of activities, from an exhibition (Lemuelson
>Center), to an annual festival (MindFest in Fort Worth), to ingenious
>workshops (Karen and Mike et al at the Explo), to designing spaces
>for play (Minnesota) to inventing and marketing new programmable
>bricks and related activities(Mitch Resnick at MIT, with the
>Crickets).  Also germane to this is the APE (I think it means Active
>Prolonged Engagement) project at the Exploratorium.  The various
>products and evaluations of these things are readily googled.

Wonderful stuff, of course.

But isn't it interesting that 'play' is such a tricky word to sell to 
educators and academics? it was apparently necessary to re-name 
'play' as 'Active Prolonged Engagement' for a four-year project 
funded by the National Science Foundation, subsequently documented 
with a publication, conference presentations, and journal articles...

You have to smile at this thought.


[log in to unmask] * http://www.interactives.co.uk
*
Give people facts and you feed their minds for an hour.
Awaken curiosity and they feed their own minds for a lifetime.
*
Ian Russell 

***********************************************************************
More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://www.astc.org.
To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]