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Families are my largest source of visitation. My experience with families that come is that often a family has a self-appointed, designated reader who may read the text out loud even if no one else wants to hear it. From days interning at the Exploratorium I found that visits to our "libraries of exhibits and experiences" is about freedom. I would prefer to have text that visitors can read or not. It's their choice and the essence of informal education. The more you reduce the copy the less freedom you are allowing them. Now we have even better opportunities to provide content to those who want more, especially those who have hand held devices.
School groups are a different audience and that's why we try to do something before they come and something after they come. But even with kids running through the exhibits, they have the freedom and we have the duty to provide enough exhibits in our library that there is one or more that calls to them. If there is one that gets them thinking or asking and trying to answer the what if question then that validates what we do. I don't go to the library to read every book in one trip and indeed I avoid those on tax law-but a good library has many choices and so does a good science center.
-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Friedman
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2013 10:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Richard Dawkins, the Exploratorium and Exploding Custard
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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I heard nearly identical words from a New York Times reporter, Edward Rothstein, when he toured the NY Hall of Science some years ago. He said most of our exhibitions were very similar to the Exploratorium's, and just as in San Francisco, kids just ran around pushing buttons without learning anything.
I told him that tracking and timing studies showed that while many kids spend the first part of their visit making very brief stops at many exhibits, they tended to spend longer times later in their visit concentrating on a few of the exhibits they had skimmed earlier. Watching average holding times at a given exhibit tells you something very different from what you can learn by tracking individual visitors as they move from exhibit to exhibit over the course of an hour or two. I also told him we had commissioned many visitor studies, including structured interviews with hundreds of children and hundreds of adults, and that he might be surprised to see how much visitors did in fact learn, even from what appeared to be short, fun-filled moments. I offered to send him these studies. Mr. Rothstein declined my offer, saying he wrote about his own experiences, reactions and perspectives, so he didn't need to see any of our visitor studies.
Interestingly he seems to have softened his views in recent years, and even had nice things to say about the Exploratorium in later reviews.
Still I've noticed that long texts in any exhibit is an excellent predictor of how favorably Mr. Rothstein will review it. The exhibition he liked best at NYSCI was our oldest one, with the most text. We do indeed have our work cut out for us.
Alan
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Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T +1 917 882-6671
E [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>
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