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MoMath
A couple weeks ago, I took ARR to the Museum of Mathematics.
It's...not quite accomplishing what it intended to accomplish.
To be clear, ARR had a marvelous time. And the museum is chock full of very cool interactives that teach math in very cool ways.
But it's kinda like it was designed by idealistic grad students for the kids they remember themselves being, without actually interacting with children or watching how museum visitors interact with exhibits at all.
For one thing, they chose not to do label decks. Now, it's clear that they did so because they wanted to have multiple screens' worth of information, at different levels of understanding. Which is cool and all. But they didn't have enough screens to put one with each interactive. Instead, they have screens kind of scattered around, each of which has the info for 3-5 interactives nearby. Each interactive is on two different screens, so it's not like if someone is using one, no one can read about the other interactives in the area.
But...it's obvious that the way this is intended to be used is that you need to find a screen with an interactive. You need to read the intro and the instructions, so you know what question the interactive is intended to answer, and how to use the interactive. Then you need to go over and play with the interactive. In most cases, these are not simple things, either. Like, in one, there's a basketball firing machine. You're trying to get it into the hoop. You can adjust the height, the angle, and the velocity. You have all kinds of read-outs. You're clearly expected to experiment, discovering what happens to the arc of the ball as you change different variables, until you figure out the perfect combo that gets the ball in the hoop. Then you're supposed to reset it for the next person. Then, you come BACK to the screen to learn about the math that explains what you just did.
This is a process designed by someone who has never, ever been in a museum before.
What actually happens is a child runs up to an exhibit. They excitedly press buttons. Something incomprehensible happens! Now there's another whining child behind them, so it's not like they can try something else and see the difference - it's the next kid's turn. Child runs to the next exhibit! Can a parent try to read a screen to figure out what just happened? Sure, if you're ok with taking your eyes off your kid in a room full of other kids and equipment that looks like it might be easy to break if used as a jungle gym.
My particular favorite was a plinko machine thing that had sliders for different probabilities. It spat out balls every second or two, and then they bounced their way down through a tree, depending on whether they branched left or right. Clearly, you were supposed to set a probability, and then stand back for 2-3 minutes watching until a bell curve formed out of balls in different stacks at the bottom. Then you're supposed to shift the probabilities and wait again to see how the curve changes.
There were toddlers. Guess how that went.
Oh, and there were plastic badges that clearly used to be identified with individual visitors and would allow you to store and send your results from multiple exhibits to one email address. They did nothing. The computers at some stations did try to read them, and failed. They clearly had not done anything in so long that the current staff weren't really sure what they were supposed to do.
Ah well. ARR had a good time. The one or two that actually really captured his imagination and also that no one fought him for, I think he may have actually learned something, because he interacted with them long enough both for him to see how different combos produced different results and because he stayed in one place long enough for me to hunt down the associated screen. The basketball one...not so much.
It's...not quite accomplishing what it intended to accomplish.
To be clear, ARR had a marvelous time. And the museum is chock full of very cool interactives that teach math in very cool ways.
But it's kinda like it was designed by idealistic grad students for the kids they remember themselves being, without actually interacting with children or watching how museum visitors interact with exhibits at all.
For one thing, they chose not to do label decks. Now, it's clear that they did so because they wanted to have multiple screens' worth of information, at different levels of understanding. Which is cool and all. But they didn't have enough screens to put one with each interactive. Instead, they have screens kind of scattered around, each of which has the info for 3-5 interactives nearby. Each interactive is on two different screens, so it's not like if someone is using one, no one can read about the other interactives in the area.
But...it's obvious that the way this is intended to be used is that you need to find a screen with an interactive. You need to read the intro and the instructions, so you know what question the interactive is intended to answer, and how to use the interactive. Then you need to go over and play with the interactive. In most cases, these are not simple things, either. Like, in one, there's a basketball firing machine. You're trying to get it into the hoop. You can adjust the height, the angle, and the velocity. You have all kinds of read-outs. You're clearly expected to experiment, discovering what happens to the arc of the ball as you change different variables, until you figure out the perfect combo that gets the ball in the hoop. Then you're supposed to reset it for the next person. Then, you come BACK to the screen to learn about the math that explains what you just did.
This is a process designed by someone who has never, ever been in a museum before.
What actually happens is a child runs up to an exhibit. They excitedly press buttons. Something incomprehensible happens! Now there's another whining child behind them, so it's not like they can try something else and see the difference - it's the next kid's turn. Child runs to the next exhibit! Can a parent try to read a screen to figure out what just happened? Sure, if you're ok with taking your eyes off your kid in a room full of other kids and equipment that looks like it might be easy to break if used as a jungle gym.
My particular favorite was a plinko machine thing that had sliders for different probabilities. It spat out balls every second or two, and then they bounced their way down through a tree, depending on whether they branched left or right. Clearly, you were supposed to set a probability, and then stand back for 2-3 minutes watching until a bell curve formed out of balls in different stacks at the bottom. Then you're supposed to shift the probabilities and wait again to see how the curve changes.
There were toddlers. Guess how that went.
Oh, and there were plastic badges that clearly used to be identified with individual visitors and would allow you to store and send your results from multiple exhibits to one email address. They did nothing. The computers at some stations did try to read them, and failed. They clearly had not done anything in so long that the current staff weren't really sure what they were supposed to do.
Ah well. ARR had a good time. The one or two that actually really captured his imagination and also that no one fought him for, I think he may have actually learned something, because he interacted with them long enough both for him to see how different combos produced different results and because he stayed in one place long enough for me to hunt down the associated screen. The basketball one...not so much.
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