Toys in Everyday Science Exhibit

exhibit_illustration-by-tadashi-tokieda

In Radcliffe Yard at Harvard (Cambridge, MA), there is an exhibit by Tadashi Tokieda on Toys in Everyday Science.

It looks like fun!

This evening, as part of the Radcliffe Open Yard event, students will be staffing the exhibit.

To help people play with the toys in science.

Tadashi Tokieda is the 2013–2014 William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow, Radcliffe Institute and is spending the year hanging out and helping people understand how science (and mathematics) works.


His learning history is fascinating, and a good example to those outside the academy!

Speaking of the academy, I am saddened to report that this exhibit is not list of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture website.

Nor is there any connection to museum education methodology mentioned on the Radcliffe Institute website.

This is ironic, as what Tokieda essentially is doing the work of museum educators.

For example, look at past and current exhibits developed at museums.

Try the Exploratorium's Geometry Playground, the Acton Discovery Museums' Hands On Science, the Boston Children's Museum Science Interactives, the Museum of Science's Investigation Station, or others....

Museum educators spend a lot of time, creativity, and joy developing hands on demonstrations of scientific and mathematic principals so others can learn by doing.

It's a field of study, as well.



Look at the current issue of the Museum Educators' Roundtable journal, entitled Engaging Visitors to Create Positive Futures.  They are offering the editor's review article for all to read here.

Or go to the American Alliance of Museum's EdCom publication on principals and practice.

So when one of the high holies of academia presents something (admittedly, a wonderful something) as revolutionary and new, by virtue of the nature of its presentation and by what is funded and the nature of its funding, the subsequent reification of that approach by what is not said becomes significant.

In other words, ignoring others who are doing essentially the same work and have been doing it for a long time, continues the existing power dynamics of 1) the university as a more important site of learning than any other learning environment (school or museum or other) 2) maintaining traditional educational views of learning as content transference from the expert to the novitiate.

Ok, the Institute may fight me on the 2nd point there -- and with some reason -- but my contention here is that offering a "playful" approach as so unique and isolated as deserving of special recognition only serves to highlight the majority of the institution that isn't that.

And it also demonstrates how, once again, learning is compartmentalized and how we do not communicate with each other, despite our commonalities of subject and approach.

oy.*

The HMSC website is mentioning this Saturday's Day of the Dead event.





Think I'll go to that.

And to the Toys in Science exhibit.

After all this meta-conversation, I could use a little fun!



*Ok, sorry to get all Foucault up in your face!  Shouldn't take myself too seriously, either!

Kinesthetic Learner Video

Found this while researching something else. It's from About.com.

Note the blurb for field trips and museum visits.  ;)

It also brings back memories of teaching in an all-girls school!

Role Playing is Gaming with the Whole Body

Fighters with rapiers and daggers at a reenactment, 3 September 2007, 11:57, Crossed Blades, Jean, upload by Herrick, from Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, role-playing is undergoing a "renaissance."

Which is a wonderful play on words, as a lot of these stories are really medieval.

According to the WBUR story "You Be the Dragon Slayer":
The term interactive storytelling is used to describe all manner of games where both the audience and actors are part of the performance: live-action role-playing (LARPs); alternate reality games (ARGs) that often mix in technology or mobile devices; interactive theater; and everything in between, including old-fashioned role-playing games (RPGs) like D&D.

There is also the Society for Creative Anachronism.
(Sorta the anti-sport fencing.)

The connection here to museums is pretty clear, as there are a number of living history museums -- Old Sturbridge Village, Conner Prairie, and Plimoth Plantation to name a few -- that use role play as interpretation.

And there is a host of information coming out about gaming as educational, as well.
(Or not.  There is some debate.)

So is there some way we can combine these?

Higgins Armoury Museum already is.

Can we at indoor, non-armoury museums use this experience?

Museums are like Independent Schools....

The past two week in the museum administration class I'm taking we've been reading about the museum's relationship to the audience -- the museum as an authority but also as accountable to the audience.

Part of the accountability is engaging the audience. Another part is being a trustworthy source. Another part is serving the mission. Another is meeting the needs/expectations of other stakeholders, such as the board or the auditor or the powers that enforce the non-profit laws....

While Nina Simon pushes us to think about revisioning the museum audience as participatory, and while Simon and other people (Grove, Robin Cembalest, Jim Richardson, Daniel Spock, Anderson, and Carol Scott (and Carol Scott) just to name a few), "reshape" thinking about museums as places of shared authority, I found myself thinking the same thing, over and over again:

Running a museum is like running an independent school.

Why do I say this?

Here is a list of "Why a Museum is like an Independent School":

1) Both are non-profit institutions.

2) Both are mission-driven.

3) Both are responsible to multiple stakeholders.

4) Both, in their essence, are learning institutions.

5) Both have retention as a major concern along with the "yield rate" (memberships from admissions for museums and returning students from admits for schools) but neither has all of their program primarily funded by "receipts" (gate receipts/admissions for museums, tuition for schools).

6) As a consequence, both are actively involved in courting additional sources of funding

7) This means that both institutions need
a) additional "profit centers"
(like a summer school or a golf course for a school, and a cafe or a gift shop for a museum)
b) a talented and active development office
c) a head who knows how to
-- schmooze and smile
-- read a balance sheet, an income statement, and other financials
-- hire talented others who can raise money and delegate to them
d) a SWOT analysis performed on a regular basis
e) a "theory of change"
f) an understanding of "backwards planning" on an institutional level
g) an ability to "curriculum plan" (a la Heidi Hayes Jacobs) on an institutional level -- perhaps also known as the "logic model"
h) an ability to develop and use "metrics"
i) an understanding of the "implicit messages" or "hidden curriculum" that the institution sends
(like, the education department with a tiny budget and housed in the museum's basement or toilet door signs that read "Men" and "Ladies" in an all-girl school)
j) the ability to sector the potential markets and constituencies


8) BUT, in both cases, the institutional head needs to be someone who understands the institution and its people (i.e., cannot be just a "numbers-cruncher") because

9) Both museums and schools are creative fields, with their own complex institutional cultures which shapes the people and the perceptions, within and without, of how these institutions work. The CULTURE and the PEOPLE are ignored at the leader's and the institution's peril.

Because creative people are not driven by the same priorities as and do not have their thinking shaped in the same ways as business people/mba's, which is why the creative folk went into the non-profit sector in the first place! The monetary incentive while important is not the primary inducement for a teacher or a docent.

10) Both would benefit from an infusion of Web 2.0 technologies and techniques...

11) But both, as mission-driven institutions with their own histories and with budget limitations, are hard-pressed to implement said technologies but need to do so as a tool to realize the mission goals.

12) Both benefit from a CONSTRUCTIVIST approach to their programmatic design.

13a) Programs that are more like "play" or "leisure" are better received.

13b) The audience of each comprises more than just children.

14) They are products of their community.

15) Both are accountable to their public, yet the audience/student population changes with each generation...

16) And therefore, at the end of the day, both are participatory institutions, because without the people whom the institution and its mission is supposed to serve, there would be no institution. Ergo, both museums and independent schools are service organizations, who must SHARE authority because they are accountable to audiences, whom they must entice to return, with the prospect of a value-added experience.

Running a museum is like running an independent school.

This thought is actually, strangely, liberating for me.

You see, I'm trained to run an independent school.

But I'd rather run a museum.