Blogging about Blogging

by ryan

I just wanted to share the really neat conversation that a few of us got to have with some women who were starting a science learning center in Montana. They visited the exploratorium to share ideas about teaching, outreach, and team-building. They were especially interested in our foray into the blogosphere, as they were thinking about starting a my-space type community for their explainers. Apparently, as far as they could find out on the internet, we were the only group of explainer-like-museum-people doing a blog (They found the site on google after the Explo reps told them that no such blog existed). I guess we’re still an underground phenomenon.

As we were talking, we started to have some really exciting ideas about what could happen if this blog takes off and is joined by other explainer blogs around the country. Alot of museums use exploratorium designed exibits and it would be great to share info about how the same exhibits work in different spaces. It would also be awesome to share ideas with other groups – like the museums we visited on our field trips, learning how educators work with kids in informal settings across disciplines and areas. If other programs started blogs, we could link them together forming a valuble community for not only us educators, but also visitors who want to prolong their experiences and connect their visits to disparate museums. All this is in its infancy stages (or should I say chicken fetus stages), but its a really exciting dialouge to be having.

Finally, I want to say how proud it made me feel that the explainers, on our own, had continued the spirit of innovation that defines the special place we work at. We should give major kudos to Luigi for running with the initial idea and everyone else who is posting or visiting the blog. And if anyone out there reading this is involved in a museum educator community and want to talk about starting a blog or linking an existing blog and continuing this discussion, give us a e-mail or post.

On a related note, I found this article online and thought it was pretty neat to get a little more information about what exactly this blogosphere is anyhow…