Posts
Education & Interpretation
An Unconventional Museum Education: Prioritizing Community Need
Ever since I was a student of museum studies at Georgetown University, I’ve been interested in how to embed museums into their communities in more useful and necessary ways. Now, at the …
The Benefits and Challenges of Producing Creative Aging Programs for the LGBTQIA+ Community
Since 2018, AAM has partnered with Aroha Philanthropies to highlight and support museums that are developing programs for older adults, and to encourage others to do the same. The aim has …
Game Plan Call for Applications! Professional Development for Museum Educators
In 2008, Dr. Jane McGonigal delivered the inaugural lecture for the new Center for the Future of Museums. McGonigal, who is both a professional futurist AND a ludologist, made the case that …
Rebuilding Pathways: How DEAI and Creative Aging Intersect at the Speed Art Museum
As museums work to become more diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive, one community is often left out of the discourse: people over the age of fifty-five. This may be because they …
Attracting Charitable Giving through Education Programs
In this series of posts, EdCom’s Trends Committee is taking a deeper look at emerging phenomena identified in the 2020 edition of TrendsWatch from the Center for the Future of Museums. In …
Why I Abandoned the Traditional Museum Education Model
Personal stories are how we, at Nemours Estate, connect our visitors with the duPont family who once lived in this grand place. So I’d like to share my personal story of building a museum …
A Big COVID-19 Pivot: The Museum Assessment Program Goes Virtual
The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) is one of the most valuable programs offered by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) for emerging institutions, museums undergoing structural change, …
My Primary School is in a Museum—US Pandemic Edition
Can you imagine being a school-age kid during this pandemic? Whether they are glued to a screen trying to learn via Zoom, attending class masked and distanced, or being home-schooled, this …
The Promise of Virtual Education Programs: Cross-Cultural Exchange, School-Museum Collaborations, and STEAM Learning (and Lemurs!)
To continue providing meaningful experiences for pre-K through twelfth-grade audiences in the era of COVID-19, museums must re-envision educational practice for the virtual realm. By …
The Keys to Sustainable Online Programming? Partnerships and Professional Development
Recently, I’ve been analyzing the efficacy of museum-developed digital programs over their thirty-year history, and I’ve noticed a common theme: Every study extols the benefits of such …
Shuttered Children’s Museum used as a New Orleans school
The Louisiana Children’s Museum found a way to serve it’s biggest audience in spite of the coronavirus closure…
Should There Be a Core Document for Education?: An Update on the EdCom Task Force
As a prerequisite to accreditation, museums must submit five Core Documents for verification, a set of plans and policies considered fundamental to professional museum operations, values, …