Silence of the Lands is a virtual museum of natural quiet in Boulder, Colorado, based on locative and tangible computing. The project promotes a model of virtuality that empowers the active and constructive role of local communities in the interpretation, preservation, and renewal of natural quiet as an important element of the natural heritage. This is accomplished by using sounds as conversation pieces of a social narrative aimed at transforming the virtual museum into an organism linking the people, perspectives, and values that pertain to the specific environmental setting of Boulder
This chapter explores what is already known about museums and their long-term impact on visitors, the complexities and challenges inherent in trying to study and understand long-term impacts, future research and methodological approaches that we can use to effectively assess the longterm impacts of museum experiences, and the implications of these efforts for practice.
The notion that science is unified in one way or another dates back at least to Aristotle, though unity claims since then have been diverse and va riously motivated. By way of introduction to the modern discussion of unity, disunity, and integration, in this first section we examine five historical attempts to unify knowledge: Aristotle’s metaphysical and hierarchical unity; the Enlightenment project of the French Encyclopedists; the systematic unity of Naturphilosophen Lorenz Oken; the methodological unity of the Vienna School’s Encyclopedia of Unified Science; and finally, the organizational
Despite originally being almost exclusively focused on the school context, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) emerged as an amazingly relevant document for the informal context as well. All four of the Standards—Teaching Standards, Content and Inquiry Standards, Professional Development Standards and Assessment Standards—can, should, and as the chapters in this volume clearly attest, have been adapted for use in and by informal education institutions. The importance of debate and discussion, collaborative and shared responsibility for learning and data-based inquiries, and an
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Institute for Learning InnovationJohn H Falk
MinnAqua, a program of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Division of Fish and Wildlife, educates the state's youth about angling and aquatic resources. In 2001, MinnAqua began developing a leaders' guide so educators could carry out MinnAqua activities in their own setting. As part of the development process, a formative evaluation was undertaken to answer two questions: (a) to what extent are MinnAqua's rewrite guidelines addressed in individual lessons and the leaders' guide as a whole?, and (b) to what extent does the leaders' guide meet the educational needs of