Education & Interpretation

2019 Award Winner for Excellence in Resources: Sea Curious Video Series

By Miranda Kerr

Museums are a great source of information and resources for their audiences. This year’s winner of EdCom’s Excellence in Resources award, the Shedd Aquarium’s aquatic animal video series Sea Curious, proves that. Judges were particularly …
Science Gone Viral: An interactive comic engrosses readers in educational material

By Geralyn Abinader

What’s more fun than reading comics? And what if a comic could not only model science inquiry processes, but also offer readers the opportunity to jump in and solve a mystery along with the protagonists of the story? Action, adventure, and …
Animated Museums: The Ongoing Experiment Called “Art Mix” at the Crocker Art Museum

By American Alliance of Museums

Museums continue to think outside the box when engaging their audiences. This EdCom One Good Thing panel discussion occurred October 10, 2019 at the Crocker Art Museum. Panelists share recent experiments with engagement through evening …
It Takes a Village: How community partnerships made for a winning summer camp formula

By Jeff Ludwig & Zachary Finn

For museums with the resources and opportunities to do so, offering a summer camp is a great way to open up the doors to students whose guardians might need the structured daytime hours a camp provides, and to offer students an interactive …
2019 Award Winner for Excellence in Practice: David Rios

By David Rios

According to his nominator, David Rios, Director of Public Programs and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM), “excels in building experiences and shaping content in ways that create engagement and …
Is History Haunted?: Three museums explain their supernatural programs

By Andrea Malcomb, Mark Nardone, and Kristen Sheldon

Around October, the weather gets cold, the days get shorter, and the spine begins to tingle. People start looking for eerie activities to scratch the itch, whether haunted houses, horror movies, or ghost tours. This is an interesting …
An International Collaboration to Promote STEAM Experiences

By Susan Dorsey

As museum educators, we often teach children to appreciate art as a method of self-expression, but we can also use it to engage them with challenging educational subjects. Research suggests there is educational value in interdisciplinary …
Using the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers as a Catalyst for Change

By Trevor Jones

Who visits our museums? What are their motivations, and what do they expect from the experience? Alternatively, who is not visiting, and why not? These are critical questions for the future of individual museums, and for the entire field. …
Time to Reassess: A university art museum plans its next chapter with the MAP program

By Tania Said

As the director of education for the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University (DOMA) in Muncie, Indiana, I am always on the lookout for resources to help us meet new challenges. The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) offers …
2019 Award Winner for Excellence in Programming: Classroom-in-Residence at the Hammer Museum

By Theresa Sotto

Ninety-six percent of art museums offer single-visit school field trips, and many also provide professional development opportunities for teachers. While a recent study indicates that these single-visit trips have a measurable impact on …