I am interested in the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco.
Please present the concept and the actual situation.
Recently the hands-on style museums increased in Japan and there is
a science museum near my university. I consider what a learning resource
environment is and regard a museum as one of important resource places.
I and my students investigated the science museum. Our purpose of
investigation was to clarify the activy of the users.
R. Gelman et al.(Perspectives on socially shared cognition. 1991) described
the specific interactional style in face of exhibitions and pointed that
child users seldom used the exhibitions to match go well
with the organizers or the designers. We also observed the same
discrepancy between users and designers.
These episodes told us that the setting of 'hands-on' automatically
correspponds to comprehension of the concept related with exhibition.
> Perhaps that
>it is a lot more fun to make batteries than to talk about making
>them. And that it is the old fear that making batteries precludes
>talking watts.
I agree with you in this point. But I think the distinction
between 'making' and 'talking' is not so important. We should rather
consider the quality of the interaction in face with the exhibitions.
R.Gelman et al. tried to change the children's action to the exhibition
by an artificial machine support. For example, when there is a child
,who can not read letters and his/her father there, the father often
takes a rest in the corner and the child tries the exhibiton without
following the instruction. So they set an auto voice stystem for the
case.
However, I think we should not designe the individual learning situation
but the interational situation including the parents. Hands-on style
focuses on the individual experience, individual learning and individual
significance. In this sense, it is not activity based learning environment.
Anyway, I would like to hear more from you.
Thank you for collaboration.
P.S. I do not know the term 'minds-on'. Explain it, please.
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H I R O A K I I S H I G U R O
Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education,
Miyagi University of Education
Aramaki Aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980 Japan
Phone/Fax:022-214-3523 E-mail :h-ishi who-is-at ipc.miyakyo-u.ac.jp
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