Great barrier reef coral shots

Laureen and Kristina papers

New World Blogging - It's kind of a more convenient, more interactive, more interesting newsletter with more depth, a bigger audience, and more channels. If it could replace a newsletter it might be cost-effective, too, or if it could bring in new visitors. Still might need ways for people to request print/mail version only.

Audiences, Visitors, Users - Excellent discussion of the difficulties involved in knowing who is looking at your web site and what they are getting out of it. It's no wonder people often tend to just go along with the hype and imagine that the hyperreal has to be done--you'll surely look rather silly if you don't. Yet there are just as surely good and bad web sites, so paying attention to it, how it can be made better, etc is said here to be worthwhile. Part of it I think is simply building up a community of interest and involvement, making your museum known in the world of knowledge and information, and communicating your message--esp to those who listen to it.

Jordan and Jeff papers

OpenCollection seems like a move in the right direction for museums. I like how it puts the museum catalog close to the public web user interface--should lend itself to incorporating catalog records into web exhibits and whatnot in some imaginative ways. I also like the image manipulation facilities it seems to have, and the use of authorities.

On the other hand, museums are a bit slow, you might say, in adopting some of this technology. Better late than never, but the paper still reflects some of this naivete. They say "All access to OpenCollection is via a web browser-based user interface. No other software is required." This is very well and good, but what software is used for the database itself ??? No clue.


The My Evidence paper does a good job of taking you through the design team's process. It seems like an interesting project, and I think they did a good job on it, though I think they could benefit from incorporating some non-scientific beliefs and values into it as well. If nothing else this would help its appeal to a larger and longer audience.

My main problem with the paper is that it reads like a boring mystery. They could give us some intriguing end results up front so we readers would have more interest in the process they went through, or they could provide more foreshadowing, or do something to alter the slow chronology of one thing after another, starting at the beginning, etc.

Sydney botanic gardens

"Sex + Death" at the botanic gardens. That's what it says if you look carefully. I wonder if any American botanic gardens has ever spelled out those words in a flower bed. It's a show about:

"Stunning displays of orchids and carnivorous plants with humorous interpretation tell the story of fundamental evolutionary processes. The seduction of insects by plants, their unwitting co-operation and the cruel deception leading to inevitable death are played out using rare and unusual orchids and sinister carnivorous plants."

And now for some bats!

Sydney zoo

Continuing the travelog portion of this blog.

Sydney Zoo is a very good zoo -- for Australian & African animals.

It has great views of the harbor! This is where a live bird show was performed.

Wild pig is one of the few Australian animals we actually saw in the wild. Saw one at Cape Tribulation, rooting around in the jungle -- a natural aerator and said to be quite beneficial as the jungle mud can use the disturbance.

Kangaroo is quite notorious -- an Australian original. The zoo generally does a good job of simulating animal habitats -- see chimps below. Must get a bit boring for some of them nonetheless.

Class photos

Interactives

Lawrence Hall of Science - very cool. Good games for kids. I did "Aphid Eater." I might get better with practice, but it was confusing the first time through, and I lost the game very quickly. Probably needs better instructions, or else improved programming.

Virtual Museum of Canada - very educational. I looked at an online exhibit on "1759: From the Warpath to the Plains of Abraham" which I guess would mean more to me if I was Canadian. It works pretty well with broadband. Seems like a pretty good way to explore a subject online, i.e. pretty good use of technology to simulate a museum exhibit on a topic. Not the most fun, but not bad.

Exploratorium - probably my favorite. I did "Frog Tracker" and it was fun and easy and also educational to get a whole chorus of frogs going, and then to change it to include other frogs. Quite musical, too. Could maybe have more educational content, but there are a lot of choices here -- "Frog Tracker" is one of maybe 50 on the menu. Lots to explore.

Natural History Museum - ok. I did Velociraptor in 3-D and Volcano. Volcano taught me a few things I didn't know about volcanoes, but the graphics are kind of dull and uninspired, esp for volcanoes.

Nanozone - good. Seems a bit dated, but fun to use. Could improve the navigation without much effort. I did "The Case of the Green Milk." Has a kind of personal, neighborhood community museum feel to it.

Monterey Bay Aquarium - I did "Sea Otter Interactive" and "Deep Sea Memory Game." Both are a little simplistic compared to, say, Exploratorium, but still are fun to use and work well and make their point effectively. They might want to change the grade levels as I found "Sea Otter Interactive" informative even though it's for K-8.

UCMP Berkeley - I did "Adventures at Dry Creek." I liked the kind of adventure game format very much. Very good application to get the most out of the technology, i.e. you don't have to be ultra-flashy if you design things right.

NZ/Oz trip

The first person to guess what I'm doing in this picture wins a trip.

Just got back from a trip to Australia and New Zealand. Here's a quick rundown on the state of museums in the countries.

The Auckland museum is cool. It's being upgraded to include cafes and whatnot. Top floor is a war memorial, which is a bit boring, but they have a lot of good exhibits, including an interesting one that simulates what would happen to you in your harbour side home if a new volcano were to rise up out of Auckland harbor. The whole house rattles and shakes and then you watch out your picture window as a volcano rises up and blows you away. Very scary for small children.

Auckland Art Gallery is really very good. They had a contemporary exhibit called "Mystic Truths" that was very well done. The security guards were obnoxious as usual.

Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney is also very good and seems to have something of an international reputation. Only one floor was open (rest closed for installation) but that floor had an interesting show called "The Hours."

The Art Gallery of New South Wales is also quite good. It too has been expanded and cafes added -- seems to be all the rage.

We also went to the Australian Museum, which is natural history, but only visited the gift shop. My impression is that the museum itself is kind of behind the times.

Up in the Port Douglas area we went to the Daintree Entomological Museum, which is very cool. The collection is great; the concept of a kind of home-made, self-built museum with quite a few live insects is cool; and the grounds are fantastic. The butterfly enclosure was also nice -- they don't try very hard to keep the butterflies inside so must keep restocking it.

Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park is a kind of living museum documenting the aborigine way of life. My cohorts weren't very impressed, but I liked it, maybe because I feel some kinship with their timeless mythology.

Those were the highlights for the museums. The picture at the top is of the Rotorua Museum in New Zealand, which we admired for its architecture (didn't go in).

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