Field Trip Explainer Hopes for Visitors

by klstirr

Each year during Explainer Training, Field Trip Explainers take time to write their goals for Exploratorium visitors. This year our new crew joined us on February 1st in our new home at Pier 15, bringing our ranks to their largest ever—29 total Field Trip Explainers! We will be spending the weeks before re-opening, training, reflecting, and preparing ourselves to best facilitate these goals for visitors.

Here is what we are hoping for:

• My hope is for visitors to have fun, think about things in a new way, and to be inspired by something they have learned.
• To have Fun and gain confidence in exploring and learning independently. To discover something that moves them.
• I want visitors to appreciate the world around them as they make discoveries, link ideas, and make connections at the Exploratorium.
• I hope that visitors leave the Exploratorium more curious about the world and the gain the ability to ask questions that satisfy their curiosity.
• I hope visitors climb a ladder of fascination to a carelessly dizzying height, only to lose balance when falling asleep and endlessly fall into an abyss of pure life.
• I hope that visitors get fun memories, new interests, exciting discoveries, and lots of questions out of their time at the Exploratorium.
• I hope visitors get amazing fun and some knowledge.
• I expect visitors to have their minds blown, their world de-familiarized, and their assumptions challenged.
• I hope that visitors can take away the notion that science learning can be as simple as slowing down and noticing the world around them, and that maybe art can be that simple and accessible too!
• I hope visitors have a unique experience based on the location of our museum and learn to appreciate San Francisco in a different way. I hope the museum does a lot to focus on the natural beauty around it.
• My hope is that visitors will re-discover the value and wonder of the process of learning and apply that to critically understanding the world.
• I hope that visitors will be able to see the influence that science has on everyday life by seeing relationships—an idea of how the world is connected starts to and the responsibility to take care of the world begins to develop…
• All visitors should have fun while learning as well as taking something new they learned.
• I hope our visitors become empowered to ask “Why?” and develop the skills to figure it out.
• I want Exploratorium visitors to feel engaged and excited by their experience here!
• The one thing I would like for the visitors to get out of this building is to see how cool it is!
• My hope for visitors is for them not to feel overwhelmed by all of the other visitors around them and to take the time to stop, explore, and make personal discoveries.
• I hope visitors leave the Exploratorium with something new they learned that they didn’t know before.
• I hope visitors experience everyday things and occurrences in new ways and feel inspired to learn more about the world (& universe!)
• I hope that Exploratorium visitors are: delighted by the process of discovery, constantly engaged by our exhibits, & finding new ways of looking at the world around them.
• Visitors will have brilliant flashes of self and peer-mediated discovery.
• I hope that every visitor discovers something new and fun about science, whether they are kids, adults, non-scientists, or professional scientists.
• I hope that visitors gain curiosity about a new subject— enough to research or learn about it after they leave.
• I hope visitors learn new things that they will always remember and be amazed by.
• I hope several visitors learn at least one magic trick!
• I hope visitors feel a sense of joy and inspiration.
• I hope that visitors have fun seeing things clearly that were not necessarily clear to them before.
• I hope that visitors come out of the museum thinking that everyone (not just PhD scientists or “smart” kids) can do science!
• It is my hope that visitors have one revelation or epiphany relating to science, perception, or art & are able to relate it to their lives and the lives of others.
• To learn & be inspired!
• An inspiring, thought-provoking experience that causes them to return to their lives empowered to question, experiment, & create. Wooooooww!