The Franklin Institute Science Museum will develop, install and evaluate a museum-wide Interactive Computer Information System (ICIS) designed to enhance visitors' exhibit learning through museum-wide visitor information access and connectivity. ICIS will provide educational experiences for 1.2 million people per year, tailoring its information presentations to individual visitor needs and levels of knowledge. Exhibit based units will add advanced presentation functions beyond the usual graphics and text labels. ICIS will include 67 touchscreen-operated computer stations and six min- computers linking 27 exhibit areas in The Franklin Institute. This project is a collaboration between The Franklin Institute and the Unisys Corporation, which will provide over a five year period systems engineering, hardware, installation, maintenance and training of museum personnel valued at $2.4 million. An extensive evaluation plan will include studies of visitor-computer interaction, the economics and management of system maintenance, collaboration between museum and corporation and effectiveness of computer-based exhibit interpretation techniques. Project results will be disseminated through conference presentations, seminars and published articles.
The videodisc-based exhibit, the Powers of Ten in Time, will allow museum visitors to explore the unseen world of natural change - events that occur too quickly or too slowly to be perceived. Through the use of a touch screen and interactive software, users will be able to, in effect, speed up or slow down timeto witness changes that lie outside of the limits of human time perception. Visitors will see scenes such as a forest recovering after a fire, a wall of earth crumbling from erosion, tides coming in and out, the intricate motions of complex machinery and molecules colliding and reacting to produce fire. The videodiscs will contain more than 100 short video segments depicting a wide range of phenomena. We will use time-lapse footage, slow-motion clips and animations to show changes occurring over time periods form 300,000,000 to femtoseconds. Not only will museum visitors be able to watch these video segments at their own pace and in order they choose, they will also be able to learn more about such phenomena through on- screen textual and graphical explanations. The goal of the project is to engage museum visitors with captivating photographic segments, explain the phenomena shown with supplemental text and graphics, and stimulate them to look at the world in a new way - not just with their eyes, but with their minds and imaginations.
This proposal requests partial funding for the development of a new paleobiology hall at the University of Nebraska State Museum. This project will give students and the general public a dynamic view of the period of time known as the Age of Reptiles. It emphasizes experience with interactive exhibits that focus on concepts of geologic time, how species adapt and change, relative size, scale and time, the activities of scientists as role models, and it provides reinforcement of these experiences for students in the classroom. This project includes the first use in a museum of SemNet, a software program designed for concept mapping and the representation of knowledge networks, which will be used with a videodisc. Prototypes of all interactive exhibits will undergo formative evaluation to establish maximal audience accessibility, ease of use and educational effectiveness. The exhibit concepts will be disseminated throughout the state of Nebraska through mini- versions, teachers in-service training, and scientist-in- residence programs. This project will also be used as a teaching laboratory for the University of Nebraska's graduate program in Museum Studies.