Friday sessions, exhibits and children's museum visit

So today I guess I won't even pretend my post is going to be brief. Trust me, I don't put everything in here. Concision is just a skill I've never mastered, I guess. So aplogies in advance to anyone who's reading this. I know I tend to go on a bit.

The plenary session this morning featured Dr. Milton Chen, who was introduced by Darth Vader. Why, you might ask? Well, he's the executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Dr. Chen had some added credibility with me because he helped develop 3-2-1 Contact and the Electric Company--two of my favorite shows when I was a kid. He spoke about some of the ideas in his book Education Nation. The title refers to his idea that education of children should be our nation's and our society's #1 priority. And he does have hope. He feels we're in the midst of completely redesigning America's education system. His model of a more effective education system involves increased use of technology (smartphones, iPads, YouTube, etc) and changing curriculum to center on problem solving, collaboration and creativity. He also pointed out that, since children spend a majority of their time out of school, the community need to make more of an effort to make informal learning part of this time. Dr. Chen offered dozens of examples, details and video clips, but to go into them here would be too much. To sum up much of what he said, students learn faster and better when they are interested and engaged in creative projects that matter in the real world, and the boom in inexpensive, powerful technology allows them to engage in these kinds of projects (YouTube videos shot with camera phones, for example) without too high a financial cost for schools or society to bear.

My next session was Creating a Comprehensive Mini-Exhibition--Fun, interactive exhibits in a small footprint. The panel was led by Catherine McCarty of Science Museum of Minnesota. She started with the question: Why a mini-exhibit? Well, let me tell you. They fit in a small space (and often one not usable for other exhibits), offer an intimate visitor experience and can be replicated for loan or sale at a lower cost. She defined this category as exhibits 500 square feet or less.

The rest of the speakers all gave examples of successful small exhibits developed by their museums. One theme that ran through all of these presentations is that it's a great idea to allow one museum to dream up, develop test and build an exhibit and then sell it to other museums. They all said that the design process is by far the most expensive part of developing most exhibits, so once that's done, all the other museums can save the money and hard work that the first museum put in by just buying from them. Makes a lot of sense to me. A few specific ideas, points and bits of information in this presentation that are worth mentioning:

- The Smithsonian has a program called SITES (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service) that creates lots of exhibits and then loans them out to museums and other institutions around the country. They have multiple copies of most of their exhibits and they come in a range of sizes.

- Many of these smaller exhibits cost less to buy than a large exhibit cost to rent for three months.

- If possible, it's a good idea to create versatile, flexible, modular exhibits that can be configured in a number of ways. That way they can fit into whatever space an institution has available. One specific example of this is Denver's Ready, Vet, Go exhibit. It's moveable and can be set up in any configuration of about 350 square feet in about 5 or 10 minutes. It's fully contained in wheeled carts, so can be stored in a very small footprint. This is the type of flexibility and ease of movement that is desirable.

- The Omaha children's museum created Discovery Ports to add child-friendly content to the Titanic Artifacts show they hosted. Discovery Ports are wooden boxes on casters that fold open in various ways and contain small museum exhibits inside. They are small (box is a few feet on each side and a few feet high, six of them take up a total of approximately 300-400 square feet of floor space), highly portable (mounted on casters), versatile (they can be easily moved to where they're needed and re-themed by putting different contents in the box), and easy to loan out because of all these aspects. They sounded a little like the PAL concept, but more specifically exhibit-centered rather than offering open-ended play.

- The Omaha staff presenter (whose name in not in the program) pointed out that it's easy to loan exhibits between museums without worrying too much about content, because "what's best for kids is the same everywhere."

- Paul Martin of Science Museum of Minnesota spoke about how designing smaller, cheaper exhibits allows museums to be faster and riskier in designs. If an idea fails, their entire budget won't be blown. He cited some very interesting research his museum had done indicating that the average time visitors spend in a 5,000 square foot exhibits space is 12 minutes. In the museum's latest 400 square foot exhibit, they spend an average of 7 minutes. Pretty good comparative bang for the buck (and the space.) Mr. Martin also brought up the idea of a sort of open-source design model for grant-funded projects. One museum will develop an exhibit and others will take the basic idea and make small changes and adaptations for their space or clientele. He also described a program started by the Exploratorium in San Francisco called ExNet (http://exs.exploratorium.edu/exnet/). A group of museums will each develop a new exhibit and then will share them, trading off every few months. That way, each museum can stay fresh without the enormous cost of either developing new exhibits every few months or renting expensive traveling exhibits.

- In stressing the importance of sharing ideas and exhibits in the children's museum world, the Omaha speaker said "this field can't afford to do all original work."

- The Denver speaker mentioned a great promotion idea they used for Ready, Vet, Go. They invited the mascots from local minor league teams to visit the museum and the kids used the exhibit materials to give the mascots a checkup. Every newspaper and TV station wanted to cover such a cut story, and they got a lot of free publicity out of it. Brilliant!

Lunchtime! Lunch was served in the basement/dungeon where the exhibitors were set up. A pretty dingy place, but the food was good (except for a nasty oily cookie). We spent a couple hours looking at exhibits and talking to exhibitors. There was way too much good stuff, and I'm bringing home a load of brochures and catalogs, but I'll mention a few of my favorites.

- Imagination Playground sold a selection of kits of big blue foam building pieces. These come in a great variety of shapes and sizes, but all fit together. They're extremely light, so kids could beat one another over the head with no fear of injury. They even included ball run pieces. A video showed kids using these in such great creative ways. I think these are probably the best examples of a perfect open-ended creative play toy I've seen. I loved them. I wanted to take a set home with me.
- My next-favorite thing was probably climbing structures by a company called Luckey. They are a series of platforms (often sort of leaf-shaped) connected to a central metal pole and/or cable and surrounded by wire mesh netting. They look great and, after trying one out at the Children's Museum of Houston, I can say they're a blast. I think we've gotta' get one of these between the first and second floors when our museum opens.

- Betty Brin children's museum had a number of small exhibits for sale that I think are neat. One's an auto repair shop called Super Service Center that packs a lot of neat stuff into 130 square feet (talk about mini), and another is a big Tonka Truck that fits into 65 square feet and has a bunch of activities in the truck bed.

- Boss display showed off photos of their super-cool ball runs. They have on in San Diego that looks so fun and colorful and has many different paths, input points and movement mechanisms for the balls. It's the best example of this kind of thing I've seen.

- Haizlip Studio, an architecture and exhibit design company, showed a drawing of an exhibit they're currently building in Visalia. It's an orange grove with air-blown ball runs, sorting areas, train tracks, etc. It looks like a neat exhibit and might be worth seeing when it's open because of the subject's relevance to our local history.

- Beene's Inc. seems to make a lot of kid-oriented furniture, including soft floor pieces. They were showing off a product that's one of those simple but brilliant ideas. It's a series of nine foam blocks with vinyl covers. These are big enough to be used as stools by small children, so we're talking floor play toys here. Each block has a section of a photo printed on each side and when they're stacked correctly 3 by 3, you can see the whole photo. Since there are six sides, there are six puzzles. I can really see kids getting engaged with these for some teamwork and problem-solving play. I really like them.

- The Wentzscope is a microscope that you don't have to put your eye right up to. You can stand a few feet back and look in and see the image perfectly in a lens about 4 or 5 inches across, but it's all totally optical--not digital at all. You can tell it's a really sturdy, well-made piece. The vendor claims he's never had to repair or replace one in 20+ years. I don't know if there's a place for a microscope exhibit in any of our future plans, but if so, I think we have to get these.

- Energy Tracks by Ontario Science Centre are simple rubber track ball runs. The one on exhibit here was a large wire rack (maybe 4 feet by 8 feet) and a series of brackets to support the track that snapped into the wire rack. You could configure the flexible rubber track however you wanted, including loops. It's another simple, low-tech product that seems to work and would be engaging for kids for a pretty long time due to the experimentation factor.

The afternoon session was Greening Through Digital Exhibitions. The primary focus on this session was a project created by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, supported by the Smithsonian's SITES program and later tested out by the Bob Jones Nature Center in Texas. The overall theme was that shared exhibits can be shared online rather than packed in boxes and shipped across the country by truck. Because this exhibit had an environmental and recycling theme, and because the original used recycled and reused materials as much as possible, SITES didn't feel it was in the spirit of the exhibit to box a bunch of them up and drive them around in trucks spewing diesel fumes. So instead they created an online blueprint for the exhibit, including signage, instructions on how to build the exhibits and suggestions for reused materials to utilize. The blueprint will be disseminated through Google Docs. To see if this would work, they chose a small Nature Center to try it out. A board member from the nature center spoke next, and I must say he, and his organization's achievement, was most impressive. Using the Smithsonian's blueprint, they put together an exhibit with 1,500 square feet inside and much more space outside with five environmental-themed areas in about 2 months for about $4000. They had to acquire all the materials, do all the fabrication and come up with content to personalize the exhibit for their specific area. I think everyone in the room who worked in museums was gobsmacked. One of them remarked later that it will be much harder for her to whine about not having enough time and money now. They did it entirely with volunteers, including a graphic designer, engineers, and just members of the general public who wanted to pitch in. Since they recycled or borrowed most of the materials, when they closed the exhibit down, all the trash fit in one 55-gallon trash can. Most impressive. I don't think there was any specific practical information I took away from this one, but I think I, and everyone else in the room, was reminded that a small group of talented and motivated people really can pull off something pretty miraculous.

Dinner tonight was at the Children's Museum of Houston. It was a pretty good meal--fajitas (or were they tacos?), rice and beans. The museum was a bit drab on the outside. It's a big facility and has a lot to offer for a wide range of ages. Some of the themed areas were strong and clear (the best example probably being the "exercise" area and Kidtropolis, the play city) and others seemed a bit muddled and confusing. Same with the exhibits. Many of them were well-designed and others seemed like they'd be hard for kids to grasp. I guess that's true of almost any children's museum, though. I also found the layout confusing and hard to navigate. My favorite things were the Luckey climbing structure and the extensive water area outdoors, which was just packed with dozens of interactive activities. Less successful were the Eco Station (a cabin in a garden with some chicks in incubators and a few exhibits stuck to the wall) and Cyberchase (I'm not really sure what that one was supposed to be about.) The baby and toddler area was large and had a variety of activities. It didn't have a big, impressive centerpiece or strong theme, but I think those are more for the parents in a toddler space (are toddlers really going to notice?), so I was okay with that. I think it was a great idea that they made visitors either take off their shoes or wear protective booties, since babies and toddlers spend so much time on the floor. Overall, it was a nice museum with lots for both big and little kids to do. I just wish the layout was a bit better and some of the themed areas were more tightly focused and less scatterbrained.