This week’s guest post is by David Bowles, Gallery Educator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In his role at the Getty, David conducts scholarly research in preparation for leading gallery conversations, lectures, tours, courses, and other programs, as well as supervising docent teaching in the galleries. Prior to this he led K-12 School…
We talk a great deal about learning from our visitors, so whenever I read something about museums by a non-museum-professional I take note. This description of a day-long teacher workshop at the Cleveland Museum of Art comes from Charles Ellenbogen, who has been teaching for 25 years (thus the name of his blog). In the…
This guest post is by Lynda Kennedy, the Vice President of Education and Evaluation at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum Complex. Lynda has worked at numerous museums, including the Museum of the Moving Image, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. A graduate of the Bank Street College of Education’s…
In Fall 2014 I began an exploration of the relationship between schools and museums on this blog, with the goal of thinking about, and rethinking, the field trip model. At that time I created a page titled Ideas and Implications, optimistically claiming that I would update the page as I conducted interviews and posted new…
A few months ago I stumbled upon an IMLS blogpost sharing research about the impact of informal learning environments on academic achievement. Deanne Swan, formerly a researcher for IMLS, mined a large body of data – the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which collected data from 21,000 children over nearly 10 years – for the correlations…
This guest post is by Claudia Ocello, President & CEO of Museum Partners Consulting, LLC. Claudia has over 25 years’ experience in museums working on exhibitions, education programs, accessibility and evaluation projects. In 2008, Claudia was honored with the Award for Excellence in Practice from the Education Committee of the American Alliance of Museums (2008) and the New Jersey Association of…
Last week I attended “InterActivity,” the annual conference of the Association of Children’s Museum (ACM). This was my first ACM conference, and I learned a great deal from presenters and colleagues. I was impressed by the organization of the conference, ACM staff’s attention to the needs of each conference attendee, and the challenging questions…
Recently I saw a video of a science demonstration in a children’s museum, and found myself wondering if the children were learning anything. What is the purpose of science demonstrations in museums? And what makes them effective at achieving whatever purpose we assign to them? To address this question I experimented with a first for…
Sarah Schertz has a Bachelors Degree in Early Childhood Education and Early Childhood Special Education from New York University. She was a part of the 2015 Peoria Playhouse Teacher Team. She teaches kindergarten at Methodist Family Child Care Center in Peoria, IL. Sarah brought her ten five- and six-year-old students to the museum for a…
Last week I wrote about exposure as a goal for field trips, and readers debated whether exposure was passive. As I stated in a reply to this post, I don’t think exposure is passive for the visitor, but I do think that it can be a way for the museum to be passive, by abdicating responsibility…
Museum Questions 