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

Alan,

Thank you for your comments, partially on my behalf.

I can agree with some of the things you say. A planetarium is certainly 
a wonderful tool - but like any tool it only has value when you know 
what it's used for. Otherwise it is just an artifact.

When I was a small boy, my father took me regularly to the Hayden 
Planetarium, (a place, which incidentally, housed one of the most 
captivating exhibits I have ever seen; a large gravity well with huge 
steel ball bearings rolling almost silently around it). Yet those pin 
points of projected light and little images of galaxies did not enter my 
soul.

It wasn't until I was twelve, when I went to camp up in the Catskills, 
leaving the city lights far behind, that I fell in love with the night 
sky and became enthralled by the wonder and beauty it contained.

Only then was I ready to use the planetarium as a learning tool. No 
amount of preliminary, formative, summative, or any other formal 
evaluation process could have opened that door for me - unless the 
effort spent doing it would have discovered that the only thing that I, 
and tens of thousands of other school kids needed to begin a life long 
love of science was a bus trip to the country.

My point is that we intellectualize too much. We have somehow convinced 
ourselves that we are involved in science because we work in science 
museums. We pay too much attention to our heads and not enough to our 
hearts.


Joe R.



On 11/1/2011 10:11 AM, Alan Friedman wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Hey, my responses are getting shorter!
>
> 1.  Joe, front-end evaluation is all about finding out what the visitor
> wants, as well as what the visitor believes and knows.   Formative
> evaluation can also find out what the visitor wants and needs, even if the
> visitor doesn't know until he/she sees what we are proposing (e.g., people
> didn't know they wanted a planetarium until they saw one for the first
> time).  So yes, the visitor counts at least as much if not far more than
> the exhibit developer or curator does, when we find out using evaluation.
>

-- 
Joe R
www.TheExhibitGuys.com

***********************************************************************
For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html.

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]