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

A couple of notes on semantics:
 
1.  I was director of a science center (=science place with  interactive 
exhibits & no collections, for sake of clarification) in  Michigan over twenty 
years ago.  When I started, the place was named  Impression 5 Museum.  Impression 
5 stood for taking in the world through  your 5 senses, but it was all about 
science, so we changed the name to  Impression 5 Science Museum to let 
potential visitors know what kind of  experiences people would find and we also 
thought "museum" would add some kind  of substance so that potential visitors would 
not think it was a children's  museum.  Anyhow, I moved on and a few years 
later they changed the name to  Impression 5 Science Center.  I am not sure if 
any of this name changing  made any real difference.
 
2.  At the museums where I have been director, we used exhibit in  house and 
sometimes we said exhibition if we felt in a stuffy mood.  We  called 
individual units "interactives," since that comprised most of what  we had.  
Otherwise, we would just call the unit whatever it was, a  multimedia computer 
interactive, a mural, etc.  
 
I am sure this little dissertation of mine will not change a thing and  since 
we do not have language police, we will keep using words in slightly  
different ways, so it is amazing we still seem to all understand each other  
somewhat.  It isn't quite the same as political discourse, where "pro-life"  means one 
thing to one political party (anti-abortion) and another thing to  the other 
party (anti-capital punishment).  And so on.  
 
Bob Russell
Learning Experience Design
[log in to unmask]
 
 



************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.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]