Tag Archives: exhibit

Learning through “active” screen time

Posted on by | Leave a reply

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.

Agile research in action!

Posted on by | Leave a reply

Members of the Cyberlab were busy this week.  We set up the multi touch table and touch wall in the Visitors Center and hosted Kate Haley Goldman as a guest researcher.  In preparation for her visit, there were modifications to camera and table placement, tinkering with microphones, and testing the data collection pieces by looking at the video playback.  It was a great opportunity to evaluate our lab setup for other incoming researchers and their data collection needs, and to try things live with the technology of Ideum!

Kate traveled from Washington D.C. to collect data on the interactive content by Open Exhibits displayed on our table.  As the Principal of Audience Viewpoints, Kate conducts research on audiences and learning in museums and informal learning centers.  She is investigating the use of multi touch technology in these settings, and we are thankful for her insight as we implement this exhibit format at Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Watching the video playback of visitor interactions with Kate was fascinating.  We discussed flow patterns around the room based on table placement.  We looked at the amount of stay time at the table depending on program content.  As the day progressed, more questions came up.  How long were visitors staying at the other exhibits, which have live animals, versus the table placed nearby?  While they were moving about the room, would visitors return to the table multiple times?  What were the demographics of the users?  Were they bringing their social group with them?  What were the users talking about?  Was it the technology itself or the content on the table?  Was the technology intuitive to use?

I felt the thrill of the research process this weekend.  It was a wonderful opportunity to “observe the observer” and witness Kate in action.  I enjoyed seeing visitor use of the table and thinking about the interactions between humans and technology.  How effective is it to present science concepts in this format and are users learning something?  I will reflect on this experience as I design my research project around science learning and the use of multi touch technology in an informal learning environment such as Hatfield Marine Science Center.

In the eyes of a graphic designer (By Zack Starker)

Posted on by | Leave a reply
      My name is Zach and I’m a graphic designer working at the Hatfield Science Center.  I handle all kinds of work that needs to be done for exhibits, posters and signage for the center.  Its a new field for graphic designers and I’m very excited to be a part of it.
     My work with the Tsunami exhibit started with a need to build some posters to explain the content and material the exhibit was focused on.  That remains the primary focus of my work, but the idea of the exhibit has changed to that of a whole experience and how to adequately handle the volume of people that move through the exhibit, making it easier to understand, easy to follow and easy to interact with the various activities.  All of this goes into how I design the visual material.  Its like telling a story and having all the material presented in a way that the viewer can follow through and learn systematically.  I also really enjoy working on changes to signs because observations are giving the organizers feedback as to how people are interacting with the signage, allowing me to design them better.
     It has been a unique experience for me and one that is not just limited to making decisions on a poster as a stand alone unit.  My design work has to fit into a bigger and broader picture and I learn quite a bit about how people respond to design and signage through the observations, which influences my design decisions.

 

At the speed of a jetliner!

Posted on by | Leave a reply

Did you know?

…In the deep open ocean, tsunami waves can travel at speeds approaching a jetliner (500 mph)?

…The States in the U.S at greatest risks for tsunamis are Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California

These are some of the interesting information pieces we have been working with in our signage work for the wave lab exhibit. It is such hard work and require great interpretive skills to decide what bits of info to include in what signage piece and how to keep it all cohesive, attractive, while still conveying the overall message of the exhibit. In this case, the message is that “waves affect human life in a variety of ways”.

Then we brake into three sub themes to explore the topics of beach erosion, coastal living/tsunami challenge, and wave energy. Before she left to her new job in California, Laura Good had been working on the overarching themes and sub themes, while designing signage pieces meant to represent those themes.  She came up with this construction zone idea to tie all three spaces together as belonging to the same exhibit. Below are some photos showing some of these area signage pieces as they have materialized. Note the yellow bar with black stripes symbolizing the construction zone.

Lego Table Sign    Caution wet floor sign   Beach Erosion Warning Sign   Coming together

Keep in mind this is a work in progress and in prototype phase. I will keep post on the wave lab as we progress. Wait until you see the big banner being designed to go in the back blue wall for prototype next week. It is all coming together, although not at the speed of a jetliner :).

 

 

 

Diving into the world of cyberlearning

Posted on by | 1 Reply

I’ve plunged into the Free-Choice Learning Lab pool and now I am completely immersed in the world of cyberlearning!  As an incoming Marine Resource Management student, I am excited to support the efforts of Dr. Shawn Rowe and assist with the implementation of the cyberlab at Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC).  My work will be focused on the multi-touch table research platform that Katie and Harrison have previously blogged about.  This unique technology will provide an incredible opportunity to explore cyberlearning in an informal science setting.

Cyberlearning was a new term for me and the definition is still evolving between researchers, educators, and those in the technology field.  In 2008, the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning initially defined the word as “the use of networked computing and communications technologies to support learning.”  A Cyberlearning Summit was held in January 2012 with 32 speakers giving TED-talk style presentations on topics that included digital learning using mobile technologies, collaborative knowledge-building through social networking, and scientific inquiry through online gameplay.  It was apparent how excited and passionate these speakers were on sharing their work and encouraging new methods for learning opportunities in different educational settings.

Blending emergent technology and educational content has sparked my imagination.  What could be possible for HMSC as a cyberlearning location?  It would be incredible to walk up to an exhibit and have the content personalized to my interests based on data collected from previous visits.  Is it possible for the exhibit to know that I was fascinated by the life in intertidal zone (based on my manual inputs or eye-tracking), and then present additional knowledge through an interactive game?  This game could simulate a tide pool and I would need to apply what I have previously learned to keep a digital sea creature avatar alive.  Then I could share my sea creature’s experience with my friends on social networking sites…hmmm.  So many research questions could come from this.  Exciting days are up ahead!

Summer, when a young researcher’s fancy turns to …

Posted on by | Leave a reply

Having more time to do research, of course! With the pressures and schedules of classes over, students everywhere are turning to a dedicated stretch of research work, either on their own theses and dissertations, or for paid research jobs, or internships. That means, with Laura and I graduating, there should be a new student taking over the Cyberlab duties soon. However, the other thing that summer means is the final push to nail down funding for the fall, and thus, our replacement is not yet actually identified.

In the meantime, though, Laura and I have managed to do a pretty thorough soup-t0-nuts inventory of the lab’s progress over the last couple years for the next researchers to hopefully pick up and run with:

Technology: Cameras are pretty much in and running smoothly. Laura and I have worked a lot of the glitches out, and I think we have the installation down  to a relatively smooth system of placing a camera, aligning it, and installing it physically, then setting it up on the servers and getting it set for everyone’s use. I’ve got a manual down that I think spells out the process start to finish. We’ve also got expanded network capability coming in the form of our own switch, which should help traffic.

Microphones, however, are a different story. We are still torn between installing mics in our lovely stone exhibitry around the touch tanks or just going with what the cameras pick up with built-in mics. The tradeoff is between damaging the rock enclosure or having clearer audio not garbled by the running water of the exhibit. We may be able to hang mics from the ceiling, but that testing will be left to those who follow. It’s less of a crucial point right now, however, as we don’t have any way to automate audio processing.

Software development for facial recognition is progressing as our Media Macros contractors are heading to training on the new system they are building into our overall video analysis package. Hopefully we’ll have that in testing this next school year.

Eye-tracking is really ironed out, too. We have a couple more issues to figure out around tracking on the Magic Planet in particular, but otherwise even the stand-alone tracking is ready to go, and I have trained a couple folks on how to run studies. Between that and the manuals I compiled, hopefully that’s work that can continue without much lag and certainly without as much learning time as it took me to work out a lot of kinks.

Exhibit-wise, the wave tanks are all installed and getting put through their paces with the influx of end-of-year school groups. Maybe even starting to leak a little bit as the wear-and-tear kicks in. We are re-conceptualizing the climate change exhibit and haven’t started planning the remodeling of the remote-sensing exhibit room and Magic Planet. Those two should be up for real progress this year, too.

Beyond that, pending IRB approval due any day for the main video system, we should be very close to collecting research data. We planned a list of things that we need to look at for each of the questions in the grant, and there are pieces that the new researcher can get started on right away to start groundtruthing the use of video observations to study exhibits as well as answering questions about the build-and-test nature of the tsunami wave tank. We have also outlined a brief plan for managing the data as I mentioned a couple posts ago.

That makes this my last post as research assistant for the lab. Stay tuned; you’re guaranteed to hear from the new team soon. You might even hear from me as I go forth and test using the cameras from the other side of the country!