Explainer Manager Workshop

by ryan

Over the past two days, the Explainers and ExNet hosted floor staff managers from around the country in a workshop designed to share with each other the joys and challenges of developing staff that interacts with the public in science museums. We had about 30 participants from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, California, and even the mythical state of Arkazonalaskasaw.

The participants jumped right in with Marcus’s hoop nightmare’s inspired relay race. We used new and improved goggles that were very similar to the exhibit. It was amazing to see people who didn’t know each other feeling comfortable enough to act silly and try something new. The barracudas, anteaters, potato peelers, and terminators squared off in epic competition.

We had a lot of fun on Monday exploring exhibits for a lengthy period of time with Explainer box materials and other items found in the cloffice.

Later on we broke out into groups and discussed “juicy topics” that we wanted to share ideas about.

On Tuesday the workshoppers joined the rest of the explainers and Thomas H. in a training where we tried to estimate the speed of sound by determining the length of the echo tube. We found out that some of our grandmothers lied to us. And one person in the class even fell for the old “let me borrow a twenty” trick.

The attendees shadowed Explainers on the floor and explored some of our exhibits. We broke up into small groups again and talked about more strategies and plans for the future.

Some of the participants in the conference may even start up blogs with their floor staff after seeing our unique web site. We will link those up when they get started for sure!

The most amazing part of the conference for me was being able to be a part of a community of educators who all faced different constraints and dream different dreams but had similar goals and could share/steal techniques. Although I was supposed to be one of the facilitators, I ended up learning way more than I taught, something that science museum folks may be familiar with. And in the end we could all agree on the most important elements to a successful Explainer program…

SMELLY MARKERS and BIG PAPER

(and wind-up toys)

UCSF Tour

by ryan

Yesterday, we had a tour of the UCSF gross anatomy labs with the amazing Dr. Peter O’Hara who has taken a special role this year as a friend of the Exploratorium and the Explainers in general by teaching us about biology and anatomy. During a normal school day, we dissect plenty of cow eyeballs and sheep brains and teach the field trip kids about the parts and how they work together. A few weeks ago Peter showed us a human brain and answered our many questions about the mind and the way our thought processes work. After that training, he offered to show us around his anatomy lab and we were excited to learn more about science and get a perspective on what medical students and professors go through daily. It was definitely a great and memorable experience that many of us would never have had a chance to do in our lives. it was very inspiring to see a very different type of educator meeting with our group of educators and teaching us both about the content of biology and the ways that his students participate in hands on dissections of the cadavers. The lab was on the 13th floor of the med center and boasted perhaps the greatest view of any classroom in the world. Here are some pictures we took before the lab. Feel free to use the comment section to discuss what parts of the ‘field trip’ were the most surprising, shocking, or interesting.

Obama Made Me Proud!

by marcusexplainer

Obama made me proud! Check out this 6 year old Obama supporter!

PIE Enlightenment Machines

by ryan

Before Luigi Karen and Mike left for India, I told the magic man himself that I would put a link to their blog on the Explainer blog page. In case you haven’t heard, the PIE institute is in India now, doing workshops with Tibetan Buddhist monks.

Luigi and the others give all kinds of great freshly updated information here -

Learning Studio Blog

We wish them luck on this amazing journey and hope that they will come back to our museum community safe, happy, and fashionable as ever.

Brain-TV

by ryan

Check out this sweet video that I made with the pictures and movie clips that Charlie Carlson took during Peter O’Hara’s brain training.

Also when I was in the library cutting the footage and adding the sound effects Jo showed me a cool article about an artist that has knitted a realistic brain model.

It was made by Karen Nordberg and is in the Boston Museum of Science.

Next week a group of us are going to head out to the UCSF medical campus where Peter will show us more about the brain and other human body parts.  We are so grateful that he’s taking the time to help us get a better understanding of the brain for our dissections and own personal knowledge. Stay tuned for evidence from that adventure.

Props to PIE for their pizzazz in the paper

by Ann Bartkowski

There’s an article in the Chron today about these science activities that went on at Chrissy Field yesterday.  The wind tubes activity that PIE has been developing were there and got featured in the photo:

Dear Mr. President

by Ann Bartkowski

Today, whilst cleaning my room, I re-found a letter that I found last year in the museum.  It was in an elementary school kid’s binder, and I copied it before I turned it all in to lost and found because I thought it was so great. Although it is not particularly relevant to science, I like the insight it provides into how kids think about things.  

” Dear Mr. President,

You’re the worst president we’ve ever had.  Your feet stink and your socks stink more than your feet.  You dress bad.  Your haircut is the worst haircut I’ve ever seen.  Last but not least I hate the way you talk.  It reminds me of the country home videos on CMT.  The next time you run for president I have a feeling I will beat you by 45,000%.

Your Happy Citizen,

Dakota* “

*name changed to protect the innocent

Pirates

by Ann Bartkowski

Remember the morning Ryan and Gabriel made us wear eye patches?  Well I randomly found this swell website all about pirates tonight and I thought I’d share what this apparent pirate expert has written about the pirate/eyepatch theory. (when this page opens, just click on the link of the left that says ‘eye patches’)