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).