{"id":100,"date":"2010-04-14T08:58:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T08:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nowyouknowabout.com\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2015-09-07T14:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T14:00:12","slug":"museum-prep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nowyouknowabout.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Museum prep"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are museums boring for children? <\/em><\/p>\n

Kids In Museums<\/a> has produced a report that says the iPod, Nintendo and Wii generation of children are turned off by \u2018interactive\u2019 displays with a couple of buttons, a flashing light and a beep.\u00a0 Hold on \u2013 haven\u2019t museums become SO MUCH MORE FUN than 30 years ago when the boredom of staring at Roman pots was really killing? But they do need to come up with something newer.<\/p>\n

One suggestion is for fewer buttons, more imagination \u2013 roleplay, dressing up,\u00a0being\u00a0Alexander Fleming noticing the green fuzz that was penicillin,\u00a0handling\u00a0the sort of fossils Darwin found on the Galapagos etc.\u00a0 But what you really need, in my view, is\u00a0preparation.\u00a0To know in advance that van Gogh painted \u2018Sunflowers\u2019 for his best mate Gauguin who was coming to stay gives it a whole new flavour.\u00a0 To understand that early navigators like Columbus only had the stars as a map makes the quadrant seem really cool and inventive (if that\u2019s all you got!). And to grasp that Beethoven was a bit hard of hearing when he wrote his 5th\u00a0Symphony \u2013 well, it paints a more interesting picture for everyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are museums boring for children? Kids In Museums has produced a report that says the iPod, Nintendo and Wii generation of children are turned off by \u2018interactive\u2019 displays with a couple of buttons, a flashing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n