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Ian, Regan

An observation from my "explainer" days:  when I was at Eureka (a Children's
Museum in Halifax, UK, similar to the Brooklyn Children's Museum) the best
Explainers (or "Enablers" as they are called there) were the ones who spent
a lot of their time kneeling down to be at or below children's eye height.
This changed the dynamic of any interaction and made it much easier to have
a 2-way conversation rather than giving a 1-way talk.  As an example, the
staff uniform there included black jeans, and I usually wore out the knees
of mine in a couple of months.

Andy

Andy Lloyd                              tel. +44 (0) 20 7942 4377
Development Manager             fax +44 (0) 20 7942 4383
Science Museum Solutions        www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

NMSI Trading Limited, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2DD, United Kingdom


-----Original Message-----
From: Regan Forrest [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Interactive Exhibit Research


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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>
> What seems to work well is a skillfully cultivated
> "low-status" persona. In
> terms of transactional analysis, it needs to be child-child. Not
> parent-child, or adult-child. Most of us here are in this
> business, myself
> include, because we are compulsive explainers. Therefore we
> actually find
> it almost impossible to achieve such humility or to ask truly open
> questions, with voices that do not imply that we already know
> the correct
> answer.
>
...

Besides making floorstaff incognito (and risk "person who knows" being
substituted by "weirdo asking me questions for no apparent reason - what's
their agenda, should I call the police?") , I can't see how staff can ever
fill that 'grandmother' role. We just have to hope that kids continue to
bring their own along.

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