Hi Hiroaki, Thank you for your interest in our Exploratorium
Museum in San Francisco and for your message. The history of the
Exploratorium is an interesting one in that it was the brain-child
of Frank Oppenheimer. He wanted to create a museum that was
different from the traditional exhibiting museum; one where the
visitor could learn and experience the practice of science. And
worked to obtain both funding and credibility for the idea during
the sixties, at about the same time that the Lawrence Hall of
Science in Berkeley, California and the Ontario Science Center in
Toronto, Canada were being built. The idea of interactivity in
museums is perhaps now well established, but at the time he was up
against a sort of Victorian idea of museums where the visitor is
told about and shown artifiacts, in a plush, carperted and guilded
setting rather than given the opportunity to manipulate and
experience the practice itself. The Exploratorium is housed in a
huge teeming wharehouse, full of noise, flashing lights and a
constant bustle. There are several permanent thematic areas such
as vision, color and language with interactive exhibits in each,
and there are feature exhibits. The current one is about DNA. It
is a great place for kids and adults alike. For more about the
Exploratorium, there is a book called: The Exploratorium: The
museum as laboratory. Hilde Hein. 1990 Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Thank you for the reference to Socially Shared Cognition and for
sharing your unexpected findings in the science museum context. It
is interesting how there always seems to be a space between
intended design and their actual uses. The hands-on/minds model is
one that theorizes the design of an exhibit, functioning as
guideline and desciptive schema for the kinds of activities that
are offered in the Exploratorium. The paper that I have about it
is an in-house reference and I would be happy to mail you a copy
(it is in French). The relational component of activity is
described in so far as it is hypothesized that an element of the
exhibit will trigger cognitive dissonance in the form of
questioning behavior. And it is the questioning behavior that
draws others (friends, family) into the activity of the exhibit.
The model is hands-on/minds-on because it is contact with the
exhibit that is hypothesized to trigger surprise (cognitive
dissonance in the form of questioning behavior). The field
experience findings that you mention are interesting in that they
capture varying occurring dimensions of activity (i.e.; dads get
tired) and the absence of social interactions around the exhibit.
It is good talking to you too.
Francoise Francoise Herrmann fherrmann who-is-at igc.org
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