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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.
Eric Siegel
New York Hall of Science
[log in to unmask]
(718) 699-0005 x 317
On Nov 14, 2006, at 8:18 AM, Ian Russell wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
> **********************************************************************
> *******
>
> At 15:03 10/11/2006, Nina Simon wrote:
>> If we want people to engage with exhibits in more open-ended ways,
>> we have to extend exhibit literacy. I'm not sure how that change
>> happens.
>
> At 15:45 10/11/2006, Wendy Coones wrote:
>> ...most often these visitors with a very open concept of exhibit
>> literacy seem to be mischievous pubescents, ...
>
> At 17:41 10/11/2006, Anna Grace wrote:
>> Plain and simple: Who doesn't like playing ...?
>
> "It's OK to play." Could this message be the key to extended
> 'exhibit literacy'? I've just been involved in developing
> Underwater Street, a new children's discovery centre in Liverpool,
> UK. What freaked me out at first was its formal education agenda.
> There wasn't one. We decided our stated objective was to promote
> play. That was it. We focused on playful experiences, not on formal
> learning outcomes. And next, the visitor response amazed me.
> Typical stay-times are several hours, or longer, in a space of 8000
> square feet (~800 square metres). Now schools are showing
> considerable interest...
>
> Of course, playing is only called experimenting when grown-ups do
> it, or when grown-ups control it...
>
> It seems to prove that we often focus on learning outcomes at the
> cost of reduced visitor-engagement.
>
> We even have 'visitor-generated content' in Underwater Street. It
> gets messy. This is what it looks like! http://
> www.interactives.co.uk/hands_uwsaa.htm and also here http://
> www.interactives.co.uk/hands_uwsiv.htm
>
> Not exactly science centre stuff! Although there are also many
> science interactives in Underwater Street. But if only we could
> communicate science with this playful level of engagement,
> experimentation, creativity and visitor-input, yet without losing
> the magic ... surely it would be a great thing to aim for?
>
>
> [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
> **********************************************************************
> *
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