Oregon State University Free Choice Learning Lab

I’m fast approaching the end of my project. This will mean the end of many other things as well. As a student employee, my job ends the day I leave school. I’ve been at HMSC for four years. I’ve been a student, aquarist, lab aide and researcher. I met most of my close friends here. I’ve trained new aquarists and watched them leave when their own contracts ended. Soon, I’ll be training my replacement. I’ve done that before, but this time I won’t be coming back. That’s weird.

I’m searching for a new job, and facing the usual frustrations and bizarre requirement paradoxes that entails. The leads I have found are very exciting. I’m ready to move on, I think, even though I can’t quite imagine another workplace at this point. I’ve been through a lot with my coworkers here, and I feel that they understand me. I hope to find that again, but that’s not something anyone can expect. Expectations can be dangerous anyway—I didn’t expect to find myself here, and I wouldn’t want to have spent the last four years anywhere else.

On the Deme front, the final stretch is frantic but productive. I’m making revisions to my final paper, and I’m including a new version of the manual. This includes a pre-fab species set with a loose scenario. One of these species is a playable body-snatching parasite with—I think—a fun/evil mechanic. Once the parasite has infected another player’s animal, he or she can choose to take over control of that animal at any time. Once the parasite takes control, the animal gets only one turn—with modified abilities—before it dies. The idea is that infected players will end up negotiating with the parasite to use infected animals for their own ends. There should be plenty of opportunities for mutualism, reciprocity, betrayal and outright jerkery.

Shawn and I will be going to the National Association for Interpretation Workshop this week in Reno, Nevada. We will be talking to interpreters about bridging the gaps between Free-Choice Learning research and Interpretive practice, “mining the nuggets” for cross-communication and visibility among professionals in both worlds, discussing potential benefits from interdisciplinary use of concepts, principles and research findings towards the shared goal among both communities of practice.

Museums are informal education settings where Free-Choice Learning (FCL) takes place and where educators and practitioners are also interpreters. FCL in such settings draws from strong learning theories and their contextual application, targeting audiences such as museum educators, evaluation staff, exhibit designers, program developers, volunteer personnel and volunteer managers. These are also the targeted practitioners mediating learning in museums through use of interpretive tools, principles and resources.

Given the complimentary nature of practice in both FCL and Interpretation fields, understanding cross-disciplinary potential and dissemination are ways to create collaborative resources and further the research and understanding of how learning takes place in museums, how the theoretical discourses relate to/build upon interpretive principles and use of interpretive tools. This confluence can have meaningful implications on interpretive program design and implementation in museum settings and others alike, as to promote valuable learning experiences for visitors.

This is what we will be brainstorming at the workshop. So bloggers please respond with any insights you may have on possible collaboration avenues and links you consider important to be made here.

Thanks!

The touch table and touch wall have been in the visitor center about a month and it has been fascinating to watch the reaction to this technology. Countless visitors have interacted with the Open Exhibits software displaying different science content and seem to have an interest in what this tool does. Touch surfaces have become more common with regards to smartphones and tablets, but to see one the size of a coffee table is unique. I started considering the ages of the users and their behavior directed towards this object. For children and young adults, the touch technology is likely more familiar. They were immediately drawn to it and appeared to have an idea about what types of gestures would allow image manipulation.

This week NPR had a feature on kids growing up with mobile technology, some considering them a “touch screen generation”. One story included information about the amount of time children use touch surfaces such as smartphones and tablets. The concept of “passive” screen time versus “active” screen time and the influence on baby and toddler development piqued my interest. Passive screen time is compared to scrolling through photos, whereas active screen time is social and requiring more focused engagement. Georgene Troseth, a developmental psychologist at Vanderbilt University, claims that a program like Skype allows for active social interaction, even if through a screen, and can help babies learn. What could active screen time mean for learning about concepts such as science in a museum or aquarium setting?

The touch table and touch wall do allow for individual exploration and social engagement. People walk up and investigate on their own, and then call their friends or family over. Some users would initially discuss the technology and then the content of the software. From limited observations, I noticed that some were commenting on “how cool” the touch table was and then reading the science content out loud to those around them. Some users verbalized connections between the content and other personal experiences they have had. The social element seems to happen naturally. The challenge is creating dynamic and interactive software that can be a tool to supplement learning even if the stay time at the exhibit is brief.

It is really easy, during the course of graduate school, to let a great many things in our lives fall by the wayside. There’s always something to read, a constant stream of emails, projects to plan, and mountains of data to plow through. Oral exams, proposal meetings, all of the writing…most days it piles on until we have to put “EAT LUNCH!!!” on our to-do lists to make sure we don’t pass out from hunger. We spend so much time on being a graduate student that we lose site of the fact that we are people who have needs beyond the next peer reviewed article.

There are lots of places where people have expounded on the importance of sleep and healthy eating for optimal brain function, but there’s more to being healthy than just those. Whole person health requires that we spend some of our time on activities that fulfill some portion of our broader identity than just “grad student.” I specifically mean hobbies, the rejuvenating experiences that remind us of who we are and what we want out of life. Sadly, these are usually the first things to get cut from our overburdened schedules. (I’m only going to mention in passing that there are also horrible people who will say that having hobbies is a “waste of time.” Personally, I think these people are a “waste of space” and won’t give them any more of my time).

I know from experience that I go a special kind of nuts if I go too long without indulging in one of my hobbies. That’s why I endeavor to

have a knitting project with me at all times. I can usually manage to squeeze in a row or two to help “take the edge off” during the day.

But, just as we stagnate if we don’t move forward with our research, I had begun to feel stagnant in the rest of my life. Get up, do work, read things, knit some, play with the cat, eat, and sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. And, since I’m a whole person, when I feel stagnant or restricted in one area of my life, it has a ripple effect through the rest.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had an interest in and affinity for photography. I had plastic 110mm cameras as a child, bought my first SLR at 17, drove my mother nuts with the amounts of film I went through, and I collect vintage cameras.

Last weekend we had our annual lab retreat, and we went “camping” at a state park a little west of Portland (we stayed in cabins with electricity and heat and had proper meals, which is as close as I’m willing to get to actual camping). I brought along my little camera (Canon PhotoShot Elph 100HS). This has been my primary camera since August 2011, and I’ve done some spectacular photography with it (considering its limitations). At the retreat, I had the opportunity to shoot a few frames with a friend’s Canon SLR and folks, it ignited a fire in me that is still burning. Yesterday I checked out 17 items on digital photography from our local library (libraries are perhaps the greatest FCL resource available, and yet so under sung).

I feel energized, awake (awake helps), and there’s so much energy it’s surging through to the grad student part of my life. Because that’s the trick about whole person health. You can’t feel great if there’s a part of of your life that isn’t working out. And I know that graduate school (like so many things) requires compromise and sacrifice, but we shouldn’t have to compromise our identities or sacrifice our happiness.

Now all that’s left is to read/watch all of these in the 2-4 weeks I have them on loan…anyone know how to bend time?

For my first blog post, I used my space to be a Make evangelist. This time, I thought I would tell you a bit about why I am such a fan, and what I think Make has to share with other educators- both formal in informal.

Maker Spaces, both in community and school settings, are spaces that nurture innovation and experimentation. With an emphasis on coming up with ideas or projects and then tinkering with materials in hands-on ways to find solutions, Make is a philosophy that embodies the notion of valuing process over product. There is also a perception that ideas and creations can always be improved upon, so even when you are done making something, you could probably still tweak it to be better, more aesthetic, more efficient, or more interesting. There does not have to be an “end goal”.

There is also a strong culture of mentoring. As community spaces, there is an emphasis on open sharing of skills as well as tools. People regularly offer their expertise to someone else who is struggling with a project. As part of the Maker Education initiative, Make is partnering with AmeriCorps to offer training to a MakerCorp so there is a population of young adults comfortable with the Make principles as well as some of the materials who are prepared to go forth and mentor young Makers. If you are curious about some of their resources, here is a link for you http://makered.org/resources/.

One of the most important features, to me at least, is the interest driven nature of Make experiences. While MakerSpaces do offer workshops for members to gain new skills with tools and such, if you walk in to one of the spaces during an open work time, you will find a wide variety of projects out as each person explores ideas and activities they are curious about.

I am hopeful that Make is here to stay and will continue to offer collaborative, hands-on experiences for all of us to become more active as producers, as well as consumers of technology!

This past week was about sharing, learning and networking. A few of us in the Free-Choice Learning Program participated in the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) Conference in the so-called “Charm City” of Baltimore. Many presentations, keynote speakers, round-tables, social networking and casual conversations later, I (at least) came back home with refreshed energy and feeling empowered to really do better.

The kick-off keynote speaker was a major realization about the outstanding environmental education (EE) work that really happens out there and how ideas do materialize and are successful in changing lives and reconnecting people to nature. One of the most engaging and provocative speakers I have ever heard, Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher who received the U.S. EPA award (among many others) for transforming landscapes and mindsets in New York City. His classroom contains an indoor edible wall that feeds students healthy meals and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. His speech was engaging, super electric, and very passionate, as he tells the story of how he moves generations of Bronx students into a better life and academic success while rebuilding the Bronx neighborhood. As he said, “it is easy to raise a healthy kid than to fix a broken man”, we are “AmeriCANs (http://greenbronxmachine.com)

There were many other outstanding speakers I could be talking about as well, including the founder and president of Spitfire Strategies, a public relation firm that works with non-profit organizations to create positive social change. Shawn would love her thought provoking, hilarious and yet very effective presentation on communicating messages. I will leave the details of that for a lab meeting, after all, it was not just about the speakers and sessions, but about self-discovery and fitting my work with the work of others, discovering great programs, realizing some bad ones, learning from lessons learned and critically applying academic knowledge.

When environmental educators get together it is about celebrating the true power of environmental messages. What we do matters and it is indeed transformative. Seeing such wonderful examples of powerful dedicated work towards a more environmentally literate society is energizing and reassuring, so that we don’t catch ourselves looking at the “glass half empty”, but fill that glass with hope and empowerment.

The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Informal science education research

Preparing for goodbyes

Mining Nuggets of Collaboration

Learning through “active” screen time

Say Cheese – Self Care through our Hobbies

Make Take Two (By Jen Wyld)

When environmental educators get together

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