Inside the Mind of A Museum Educator

Great article from a few years back on the importance of mivement and play on kids' success in school.

Really wish someone here had thought to do something similar during the Civil War sesquicentennial.

Creativity as another measure of intelligence showing how ability interacts with engagement

Although this article is focused on smaller children, it has a lot of ideas that we can adopt in our work. “Explicit directions about how to play [or think about the past] make children less likely to make their own discoveries,” which also means that learning is much less likely to happen.

More voices against the “theory” of learning styles.

#10, but replace “tired” with “stressed.” It’s called focus, people. Learn to do it, and when you recognize it in others, leave them the heck alone or silently support from the background.

I have to admit that I had no idea that the lockhouses that are rented out by the C&O Canal Trust have interpretive plans! So, not only do the furnishings have to accommodate the needs of the guests, but also what the house is trying to tell them, right down to real CCC trunks and period radios. What an amazing example of a truly experiential house museum!

All set up and ready to talk about #CivilWarSelfies at #sma2016! (at Ocean City Maryland Shore)

Although written for a tech business audience, I've had similar experiences working in museums.

This is why "learning styles" should NOT ever be taught to museum studies students, museum educators, etc. It's not a real thing and is total nonsense when you think about it. I mean, how useful is a model that has over a dozen (and growing) possibilities?

I kind of hate it that we have to prove the benefits of play on learning before schools back away from cutting recess time. Aside from that being something that’s been studied in humans and animals for ages and was known long before now, isn’t it an intuitive truth that kids need time for free-choice learning (AKA play) to grow as people?

Since the drop-dead, distilled mission at any museum be to inspire lifelong learning, the emphasis should be as much as possible on grappling with ideas and coming to conclusions, not whether those conclusions are correct or not. (That’s not to say that we shouldn’t address incorrect conclusions, just that in a museum, it’s more about the journey than the destination.)