Displaying Values, Scripting Stories: Writing Narratives of Environment Citizenship through Permanent Educational Exhibits at Local Nature Preserves

Material and interactive exhibits are important elements of many sites of learning, including science, technology, history and natural history museums. Parks and nature preserves are not usually identified as museums, and their purpose and mission do not necessarily align with the mission focus of museums. We argue here, however, that permanent environmental education exhibits at preserves should be treated as museums for analytic purposes. Preserve displays typically include collections of objects from within the park’s boundaries, i.e., bones, shells, rocks, skeletons, feathers, pelts, cones, etc., in addition to manufactured displays presenting ecosystems and physical as well as living elements of the environment. Exhibits at preserves have not been the focus of scholarship on museums to date. Bringing together analytic tools developed for museum experiences with evaluative frameworks from the field of environmental education provides a rich set of concepts for understanding the work that nature preserve exhibits do to increase ecoliteracy. We analyze permanent and interactive educational exhibits at three nature preserves in Florida through the application of a series of interdisciplinary and overlapping frameworks. We identify opportunities for transmission of knowledge about the environment and human interactions with local landscapes; opportunities for cognitive engagement with material artefacts and for participation in knowledge construction. We identify messages that use emotional engagement to encourage visitors to become active citizens on behalf of nature and humans; and to ultimately engage in sustainable actions to solve environmental problems.

Data for 3D printing enlarged museum specimens for the visually impaired

Museums are embracing new technologies and one of these is the use of 3D printing. 3D printing allows for creating physical replicas of items which may, due to great value or significance, not be handled by the public, or which are too small or fragile to be handled or even seen with the naked eye. One such application of new technologies has been welcomed by the National Museum in Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa. Here, blown-up (enlarged) Museum specimens were 3D printed for various interactive exhibits that are aimed at increasing the accessibility of their permanent displays for visually impaired visitors who rely greatly on touch as a source of observation. A selection of scorpions, pseudoscorpions, mites and archetypal bird skulls were scanned, processed and 3D printed to produce enlarged, highly functional nylon models. This data paper provides the raw micro Computed Tomography (micro-CT) scan data and print ready STL files processed from this data. The STL files may be used in their current format and details of the printing are provided.

Data for 3D printing enlarged museum specimens for the visually impaired

Museums are embracing new technologies and one of these is the use of 3D printing. 3D printing allows for creating physical replicas of items which may, due to great value or significance, not be handled by the public, or which are too small or fragile to be handled or even seen with the naked eye. One such application of new technologies has been welcomed by the National Museum in Bloemfontein, Free Sate, South Africa. Here, blown-up (enlarged) Museum specimens were 3D printed for various interactive exhibits that are aimed at increasing the accessibility of their permanent displays for visually impaired visitors who rely greatly on touch as a source of observation. A selection of scorpions, pseudoscorpions, mites and archetypal bird skulls were scanned, processed and 3D printed to produce enlarged, highly functional nylon models. This data paper provides the raw micro Computed Tomography (micro-CT) scan data and print ready STL files processed from this data. The STL files may be used in their current format and details of the printing are provided.

A Scalable Cloud Native Platform For Interactive Museum Exhibits

Science museums with hands-on and interactive exhibits are on the rise. As museums grow, the need arises to have an online platform to allow visitors to continue their ex- perience beyond a day visit. In this paper, we first provide a brief survey of techniques for building scalable cloud native software frameworks. In order to achieve low cost and persist user data, we built a django application using Heroku and postgres. This platform can be scaled horizontally on-demand to handle highly variant user traffic for augmenting the museum experience. With a focus on educational experiences, a participant’s progress on activities at the museum are saved through an API we built and can be viewed on a website. Different activities at the museum generate data for the API which can be viewed anywhere. Simulated data was loaded into our framework to validate the efficacy of our solution. Future testing is outlined in collaboration with the Fleischmann Planetarium through a trial experiment with museum visitors.

Candace Hicks, Many Mini Murder Scenes

Women & Their Work Gallery, Austin, TX, 29 September - 8 November 2018This review examines works by artist Candace Hicks, with special attention given to those in the 2018 exhibit Many Mini Murder Scenes. Hicks’s practice as a printmaker and book artist explores embroidered composition notebooks, encoded text in books and on posters, and interactive exhibits. The pieces in this exhibit include dioramas from murder mystery novel scenes with invisible ink clues and contrasting large scale papercraft images.

Building a Portable, Modular, Low-Cost Immersive Classroom

This poster was presented at the Liberact 2019 conference with the following description: "The Fort Hays State University Forsyth Library and Institute for New Media Studies have built a portable, modular, low-cost immersive classroom kit using funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grants program. The immersive classroom provides a space for 3D exploration and collaboration, data visualization, and interactive exhibits. The kit will make it possible for smaller and rural institutions to provide smart classroom technology without a large investment of time, funding, or building renovation, thereby promoting digital inclusion. Attendees from all backgrounds will learn about the prototyping process and how to build their own kit."

Push the Button: Making Security Training Fun and Interactive

As humans, we are all constantly trying to find the signal in the noise. Unfortunately, the topics and behaviors that we, as corporate security trainers, are trying to explain, teach, and reinforce are often seen as noise to those whom we are targeting. Therefore, to achieve our goals we need more than pertinent information and slick graphics; we need to find ways to stand out, capture people’s attention, and find a way to cement our desirable security behaviors with positive associations. An effective strategy to stand out, make your message more memorable, and to build a positive reputation for your security team is to incorporate interactive exhibits and activities in your security training program.