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Early Childhood Educational Programs and Exhibitions offered by Scienceworks, Melbourne Aquarium, Children's Museum, Immigration Museum and the Melbourne Zoo Setting the Scene The ASTEN Fellowship provided me with a wonderful opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the exhibitions and educational programs offered to young children by Science Centres, Museums, the Aquarium and the Zoo in Melbourne. During this study tour I collected information on teacher resources, exhibits design, educational pedagogy and hands-on activities. The programs and exhibitions that I viewed during my stay provided me with wonderful ideas and inspiration for our Early Childhood (3 to 7 years) exhibition area at Scitech called Discoverland. Throughout this report I will share with you my experiences and demonstrate how I have and will assimilate some of these ideas into my work as an Education Officer at Scitech. Scienceworks Whilst at Scienceworks I viewed shows in the Planetarium, the Blast Off Show, the Megawatts exhibition, the Science Alive exhibition and the Nitty Gritty Super City exhibition. The Planetarium The show I watched at the Planetarium was Tycho to the Moon. Tycho to the Moon is a specially designed Planetarium show for early childhood student which is based around a fictional character, Tycho the Dog. This show teaches children about the Earth, Moon, Sun and some other planets. Scienceworks also provides teacher resources for each Planetarium show. The Tycho to the Moon comes with written information and activities as well as an audio tape of the show. I was kindly given copies of each of these resources to bring back to Scitech. Scitech's next feature exhibition is Space. One of our Education Officers is in the process of developing a teacher resources for Space. The Scienceworks Planetarium teacher resources provided a great model for Scitech to use as the basis for the new resource. These resources from Scienceworks contain a range of activities and information about Space that will be useful to refer to whilst developing our new space resource. Shows One of the show offered through the Science Theatre is the Blast Off Show. This show is also about space travel, but it focuses on the history of rockets and how astronauts live on rockets. The show I saw was presented to children aged 5 to 8 years. The concrete, hands-on nature engaged the children. Scitech has a similar show called the Rocket Show. After the show the demonstrator and myself were able to swap ideas on the different props we use. Exhibitions All in all I interacted with 3 of the exhibitions on display at Scienceworks. The first exhibition I viewed was the Megawatts exhibition, based on the science of electricity. The second exhibition I viewed was Nitty Gritty Super City. Nitty Gritty Super City is a permanent exhibition at Scienceworks that has been specifically designed for years K-3. This exhibition engages young children in a variety of hands-on exhibits designed to develop an understanding of science in everyday life. Supporting this exhibition is a story book and an audio tape for parents and teachers. The third exhibition I saw was called Science Alive. Science Alive is an exhibition that looks at how people have adapted to the extreme conditions of life such as snow, fire, deep sea environments. Out of the 3 exhibitions the Megawatts and Nitty Gritty Super City engaged me the most. Chris Mulvaney, the Project Coordinator for Nitty Gritty Super City provided me with a deep insight into the early childhood educational philosophies on which this exhibition was based. This exhibition is based on the philosophies of play and discovery. These philosophies also form the foundations of Scitech's early childhood area - Discoverland, so it was interesting and informative to discuss with Chris the types of exhibits they had chosen to place in this exhibition. Visiting this exhibition provided me with ideas for exhibits that I could build in Discoverland. One of the exhibits that impressed me the most was the build a wall exhibit in which the children used simple machines such as pulleys, wheels and inclined planes to move foam block from one level to the next in order to build a wall. This exhibit was highly interactive and involved lots of cooperation between individuals using the exhibit. With sponsorship money from Woodside, Scitech is in the process of upgrading Discoverland under the new theme On the Move. Exhibit ideas from Scienceworks such as the Build the Wall exhibit are fantastic ideas that can be integrated into the re-theme. Melbourne Aquarium Whilst at the Melbourne Aquarium I watched one of their Education Programs in action. Watery Wonders is a program that has been designed for children in the early childhood age groups. The hands-on program aims to develop children's understandings of Marine Life associated with the Victorian Coast. The children involved in the lesson that I watched were very engaged and motivated. They explored and discovered aspects of marine life through each activity. Visiting the Melbourne Aquarium has provided me with some wonderful ideas about ways to encourage our visitors to interact with our aquarium. At Scitech we have developed a sponsorship agreement with AQWA (The Aquarium of Western Australia) to establish a replica of the Swan River ecosystem in our aquarium situated in our special early childhood section Discoverland. My intentions are to develop some support activities that young children can do to allow them to explore aspects of the Swan River ecosystem, modelled in the tank. Activities from the Watery Wonders program have provided me with inspiration. For instance, the Watery Wonders program has a food chain activity where the children use soft toy replicas of fish to show a food chain. At Scitech we could develop replicas of the aquatic life of the Swan River. The children could then use these to show a food chain that exists in the Swan River. The Education Officers at the Aquarium also showed and discussed the format of their teacher resources, and the method in which teachers can access their resources. The Aquarium has trails (questions and information associated with each aquarium) and background notes (about each aquatic animal they have on site) that teachers can access before, during and after a visit. The teachers can access these resources through the Internet. Scitech is about to launch into providing their educational materials on-line. The information I gained from the Melbourne Aquarium about their on-line teacher resources has provided us with a great example of how this has already been done. We will use this as a basis for what we develop. Children's Museum The Children's Museum is associated with the Melbourne Museum and caters for children aged 3 to 8 years. The museum features exhibitions, a children's gallery and a children's garden. The exhibition on at the time of my visit was an exhibition called 1,2,3 Grow. This exhibition provides an environment through which children can discover how plants, animals, minerals and humans change as they grow. It was very motivating for the young children that I saw interacting with the exhibits. The children particularly liked the exhibits that used wombats as a form of measuring their weight and height. Wombats were used as a non-standard unit of measurement. I will store this exhibit idea for future use in Discoverland. One of the exhibits in the 1,2,3 Grow exhibition that I would like to modify and incorporate in the Woodside re-theme of Discoverland, On the Move, is the Butterfly exhibit. The Butterfly exhibit is a huge mechanical butterfly that flaps its wings every ½ an hour. Using this idea I would like to develop a series of huge insects that children can sit in and manipulate to move. Immigration Museum and Melbourne Zoo My travels in Melbourne also took me to the Immigration Museum and Melbourne Zoo. Both of these centres provided me with a different perspective on educational programs offered by museums and zoos. The Immigration Museum had an interesting interactive program called Pack your Bags, which uses objects and stories with children to explore immigration to Australia and the cultural diversity that exists in our society. This stimulated some thoughts within me as to how I could use objects and stories to explores basic scientific concepts with the children aged 3 to 7 years. The Melbourne Zoo's educational program revolves around 7 classrooms that have each been set up to replicate different Australian habitats such as the Australian bush and semi-arid regions of Australia. Within these classroom the Education Officers take the children through an interactive lesson that educates the children about the types of animals that are found within the habitat mimicked by that particular classroom. A really strong point of the programs offered by the Zoo is that some of the classrooms link up via satellite to Hospital Schools. This allowed students who were hospitalised to gain access the interactive lessons. I felt that this would be an interesting avenue to explore through Scitech with Hospital Schools in WA. Conclusion The ASTEN Fellowship
has been very valuable in that it has allowed me to establish networks
with other Education Officers in Science Centres, Museums and Zoos
in Melbourne. Through travelling to Melbourne I have gained a vast
amount of knowledge and ideas that have already and will continue
to positively impact on my job as an Education Officer and the direction
of some of the programs and exhibits that Scitech offers to children
aged 3 to 7 years. |
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