http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184 Comments en-us Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:03:46 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid89 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid89 One of my early museum jobs was in a "staid" Natural History Museum and the "Discovery Room movement" influenced by the work of The Smithsonian and The Royal Ontario Museum (amongst others) helped shake the dust off the Natural History part of the museum world. Thanks very much for sharing some important history! Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:23:56 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid90 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid90 I agree that the "Discovery Room" concept is a)something that hasn't been explored enough in exhibit creation, and b)something that has been declared only appropriate for Children's Museums, and neither of those should be the case. I hope to see more Discovery Rooms in the future. Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:29:04 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid91 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid91 It was thought provoking to read about the first Discovery Room opened at the Smithsonianin in 1974. There are a number of Discovery Rooms in Australian museums (particularly at state museum level) but they were not developed until the early 1980s. The concept for 'Discovery Rooms' in Australian museums differs slightly from those in US museums; in Australian museum 'Discovery Centres' you can bring in live specimens, such as insects and lizards, for identification, in addition to seeing aspects of the collection, hands-on items, reading books in a research library and downloading information about the museum's collections from computers. These spaces in museums are designed for access to and provision of information about the museum's collections, but the hands-on exhibits also encourage discovery learning. Interesting to compare and contrast the differences between Discovery Rooms museums in the USA and Australia. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:39:14 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid93 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid93 Judy, thanks for your thoughtful recap of the development of the Discovery Room at NMNH. As you know the Discovery and Browsing Area of the Psychology Exhibition, with Caryl Marsh as Project Director, was a direct descendant of your early project. I'm hoping to write this up for ExhibitFiles, and your account provides the historical context. Gretchen Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:07:52 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid94 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid94 Hello Judy, How interesting to learn of how this room originated. It went through some revisions not long ago and the staff asked for an evaluation. The final report is at www.si.edu/opanda, under Current Reports (April 2007). It beloved by both adults and kids, and clearly promotes learning behaviors. It must be very satisfying to do an exhibit that turns into a movement! Sat, 15 Sep 2007 09:04:25 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid95 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid95 Hello Andrew. Thanks for the reference to the SI April 2007 DR study. I look forward to reading it. A glance at the study's introduction, however, indicates that the present DR differs in objectives and audience focus from the original. One example: the first sentence of the introduction suggests it is a place for "children." Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:41:59 -0800 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid115 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid115 hey y'all. i was looking for a good study of learning in discovery rooms, or designing discovery rooms for learning. Came across a reference in informalscience for j. white. came over here and found this with the opanda report! Cool. The system works! If anyone else out there knows of good recent reports on this topic please let me know. Thanks Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:02:16 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid118 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid118 Hey Karen, You should definitely talk to Fred Stein at the Exploratorium. He did a literature review on Discovery Rooms years ago that was quite useful. (Not sure if it was published.) Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:14:25 -0700 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid120 http://exhibitfiles.org/exhibition/view_casestudy.rss/184#cid120 My dad, Mike Spock, has always claimed that the pioneering discovery room dates back to the late '60's at the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. (The museum is named for an ancestor of current AAM president Ford Bell.) The room is still there in more or less the same configuration it has been in since it was created.