By Lars Kongshem
At first glance San Francisco's Exploratorium couldn't possibly be a museum--it's simply too chaotic, noisy, and alive. Housed in a building the size of an airplane hangar near the Golden Gate Bridge, the Exploratorium contains more than 650 interactive exhibits that invite visitors to explore natural phenomena through individual hands-on inquiry and discovery. The workshop where the exhibits are built and maintained is in plain view from the museum floor, and a lively din reverberates throughout the building. You wouldn't call this place boring or formal.
More than 67,000 students visit the Exploratorium on field trips each year. But don't look for a lecture-spouting, bookish guide to shepherd the kids around in well-organized groups. Instead, after a brief introduction to the museum and its rules of conduct, the children are let loose, whereupon they spill into the museum like drops of mercury, headed in all directions at once.
In the exhibit hall, roving museum volunteers known as "Explainers"--who are high school students in real life--mingle with the crowd, answering questions with cheerful aplomb. And you won't hear them telling the kids not to touch the exhibits; that's precisely what visitors come here to do.
What's going on here? The Exploratorium calls it inquiry-based learning, a concept the museum has been championing since its own inception in 1969. You need only take one look at the kids learning--by doing--science with the exhibits, exploring light and vision, sound and hearing, electricity, magnetism, and more, to realize that the museum's philosophy is working.
In a larger sense, the Exploratorium is its own exhibit, a demonstration of how educators can turn kids on to science by tapping into children's innate interest in self-directed exploration.
Founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer--brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist of atomic bomb fame--the Exploratorium has become a model for other science museums to emulate. Ironically, the "science museum" label doesn't quite do the Exploratorium justice.
"We are not a science museum," says Rose Falanga, the Exploratorium's director of library and information resources. "We are a museum of science, art, and human perception. Human perception is where art and science come together--which is what this museum does."
A popular exhibit called the Eye Track captures the Exploratorium's philosophy well. This sophisticated device records the movements of your eyes as you watch a series of pictures on a computer screen. After each image, the Eye Track displays the path of your gaze by superimposing a trace over the picture.
By revealing which features of a specific image our eyes involuntarily are drawn to, the Eye Track provides insight into the visual clues we rely on for perception. It also shows that each person looks at the same picture a little differently. It's an example of science, art, perception, and discovery--all in the same exhibit.
The Exploratorium's exhibits tackle weighty topics--among them feedback, polarization, interference, the Doppler effect, and the perception of color and music--and demonstrate them with a sense of play. Yet despite its obvious appeal to youngsters, the Exploratorium isn't a children's museum per se. In fact, K-12 students make up just 10 percent of all the museum's visitors. But real science happens here, and the kids know it. That's part of the appeal.
"I've had Ph.D. physicists in tears [interacting with an exhibit] because it's the first time they've seen a phenomenon they've read about all their lives," Falanga says.
Nevertheless, there's no denying the museum goes out of its way to make science tempting to kids. Out on the exhibit floor, Explainer Rhodri Dierst-Davies is dissecting a cow's eye for an audience of eager fifth-graders. Rhodri has a ring in his nose. His presentation is spellbinding the kids.
"Do you know the difference between a cow's eye and a human eye?" Rhodri asks the kids as he slices off the cornea. "There's no white stuff."
Wielding his scalpel, Rhodri reduces the eye to its component parts. "The outside of this is really squishy," Rhodri says. "Who wants to be brave and touch this?" A girl reaches out a tentative hand, about to get an experience textbooks can't provide.
As fascinating as the Exploratorium's exhibits are--you can spend an entire day there without doing anything twice--the museum's significance to educators extends far beyond the museum floor.
"We have a hidden agenda," Falanga says, "which is to change the methodology of science learning. We want to change the way teachers think about themselves." With a smile, she adds, "We're a little revolutionary."
In fact, the museum is on a mission to help schools incorporate the elements of inquiry and discovery into their own classrooms. In a vision statement, Goery Delacôte, the Exploratorium's executive director, writes: "The Exploratorium is interested in distributing a way of thinking, a process rather than a product."
To accomplish this goal, the museum operates a number of education and outreach programs to disseminate its methodology and help schools leverage the Exploratorium's resources in their own classrooms.
Each summer, the museum runs intensive three-week workshops for elementary, middle, and high school teachers. The teachers work with the museum's scientists and exhibits, conducting their own explorations. Follow-up programs are held throughout the year.
"When we get the teachers over the summer, there's this kind of excitement where everything is possible," Falanga says.
The museum's goal is to build the teachers' confidence in their own ability to do science. The Exploratorium's theory is that for the sense of discovery to exist in the classroom, teachers first must experience it for themselves. So far, several thousand teachers from the Bay Area have participated in the programs.
During the summer workshops, the teachers learn to build inexpensive miniature versions of many of the Exploratorium's exhibits. The museum sells a 240-page Science Snackbook, written by summer workshop teachers, that shows how to construct these mini-exhibits in the classroom.
The Explainer program helps to spread the museum's learning philosophy, too. So far, more than 2,000 high school students have participated in the paid four-month program, in which they receive more than 70 hours of training by museum staff. By allowing the participants first to learn for themselves, and then help others learn, the program not only stimulates the students' interest in science and learning but also provides valuable opportunities for personal growth, Exploratorium staff members say.
Considering the value of science museums as a teaching resource, it's no wonder they're investigating ways to extend their reach to schools beyond their local communities. The Internet is an obvious vehicle to accomplish this goal.
On the Exploratorium's World Wide Web server, for example, visitors can try out a number of on-line exhibits, including several intriguing perceptual illusions and an interactive demonstration of sound and light interference. Instructions for making miniature versions of many Exploratorium exhibits--culled from the museum's Science Snackbook--also are available. Other science museums provide similar offerings on their respective Web servers (see sidebar, below).
The logical next step is for science museums to pool their know-how and collaborate with schools to create inquiry-based science learning resources on the Internet. This is precisely the idea behind the Science Learning Network (SLN), a demonstration project funded by the National Science Foundation and Unisys Corp. that is linking six science museums and companion schools nationwide.
The three-year pilot, which got under way this year, integrates the educational resources offered by science museums with the power of global computer networking. The project provides support for science learning and teacher development to 3,000 K-8 students and 120 teachers in six demonstration schools.
"Our hope is that science museums can use their expertise to help develop curriculum resources on the Internet, not just for SLN schools, but for all teachers everywhere," says Tim Lauer, computer coordinator and teacher at Buckman Elementary School in Portland, Ore. Buckman is the SLN companion school to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, one of the six science museums involved in the project.
Working closely with a science museum has had many benefits for the school, Lauer says, both in terms of resources and mind-set.
"There's been a long tradition of doing science in museums," Lauer says. "That's something [these museums] can definitely help teachers with, especially teachers who don't feel science is their strongest suit."
Instead of simply assigning students reading material about weather, for example, teachers at the school now have the confidence, skills, and resources to create experiments to study weather phenomena, Lauer points out.
Of course, there's a lot more effort involved in teaching science this way, says Dennis St. Sauver, principal of the Museum Magnet School in St. Paul, Minn. Museum Magnet School is the Science Museum of Minnesota's companion school in the SLN and has been affiliated closely with the museum since the school was built five years ago.
"The hands-on approach is a difficult thing to do, but we're convinced that it's the way kids learn best," St. Sauver says. "We've noticed a huge difference in the way kids are thinking, and in how long they're willing to stick with projects."
The school uses the teaching method "not just for science, but also for art, drama, and other subjects," he adds. "It's part of our everyday curriculum."
Although test scores are not uniformly high--results in other subjects have not kept pace with the science scores--St. Sauver says growing enrollment, a waiting list for entry, and good parent support indicate that the school is on the right track.
Each classroom in the school has designated "inquiry zones" where kids can explore different concepts on their own. "You can bring a lot of the things museums do into the school itself," St. Sauver says. "Our school looks an awful lot like a museum."
Here's the clear lesson for schools located far from the nearest science museum, St. Sauver says: You don't always have to go to the museum. By using hands-on, inquiry-based teaching methods, you can bring the museum to your school instead.
Can't send your students on field trips to hands-on science museums as often as you'd like? If your school has Internet access, there's no need to fret. Now your classes can take field trips to science museums on the World Wide Web.
The following six science museums are partners in the Science Learning Network (SLN), a pilot project that uses the Internet to link science museums to schools. You'll find interactive exhibits and teaching resources on the museums' respective web servers as well as on the main SLN web server.
Many of the on-line offerings change on a regular basis, so don't be surprised to find new and interesting stuff not mentioned here when you visit.