Push button 'fun' or dusty shelves?

[Wild-Woman]

We visited a famous museum today. I'm not going to name as that would be unfair.
Boy have things changed since I went there-many years ago!
I'm not sure all for the good. It seemed that the whole exhibition has been swamped by push button technology that lit up this and that,started a talk etc etc.
Apparently it's supposed to be inter-active learning, but if was a kid I don't think I'd learn anything except-whoppee here's another button to press and dash off to the next bit.

I personally find what others may find 'boring'-a dusty exhibition, somewhat Victorian in a way, but character-full, memorable and with that smell of oldness and museum polish, just adds to the excitement for me.

Oh well, I must be getting old.

What do you prefer?

[matt_xyz]

I'm inclined to agree Jules (and we do know which museum because you told us you were going there in another thread ).

Everything seems to be geared to children under the assumption (rightly or wrongly) that they have a very short attention span. I've been to many interactive type 'museums' with kids and the kids do exactly as you describe i.e. dash madly from one button to another without taking in a thing. Maybe they'd take in even less though if the buttons and bleeps weren't there.

Matt

[buzfuz8149]

I am with you - give me old fashioned versus push button, I like to browse at my leisure, we visited a museum some while back that we had been to a few years before, thinking to spend an afternoon looking at what we had missed the previous time, we were shuffled in and kept moving as if on a conveyor belt, plus half the exhibits had been removed.
Fortunately our local museum has not quite caught up with the present and it still has a lot of the old exhibits, some I looked at over 50 years ago, the one that stands out is the bed bug no one told us that the exhibit was not to scale it was about 4 inches in length - you can imagine what bedtime was like that night.

[Wild-Woman]

Originally Posted by matt_xyz

I'm inclined to agree Jules (and we do know which museum because you told us you were going there in another thread ).



Matt

See. I must be getting old! I'd forgotten about that.

Dusty old WW!

[ron1863]

I think that museums are only trying their best to get young kids interested. I know that when I was young my parents used to take me to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and I was bored stiff, apart from the Natural History section. I would probably have been more interested in pushing buttons etc in those days. Now that I am older and hopefully maturer I love Museums.
Our tastes and interests change with age and if museums can get youngsters interested at an early age then all the better.

[nightshade]

Children need a knowledgable adult to make museums come alive
pushing buttons is rubbish just an easy way out for a lazy society
I take my brother in laws children out and about and if I do not know
I ask them first it is suprising the opinions they form in their own minds
about exhibits some of them very astute
Talking and sharing opinions is what opens a childs mind

[emmz]

Boy, imagine the kids now if they had to get up to turn the telly over. It would cause total chaos,lol lol . That smell of old polish and dusters out, plus the scrubbing of the stone stairs, always remains in my mind, plus jeyes fluid and bleach.

I don't think all this fast laziness in technology is good. Get the elbow grease on the go and get fit, especially children of today, they don't know what a "clean up" is, like way back when.

Mind got to say, the button techno as I call it, is handy at times

[JennyS]

Talking and sharing opinions is what opens a childs mind

Totally agree with the above from nightshade - pushing buttons is passive learning, not active learning, and just enables them to push more buttons rather than learning how to observe and think and question for themselves.

Mind you, being in the 50+ granny bracket could have something to do with my feelings on that one!

[medieval knievel]

i enjoy a bit of both; i was in seattle's museum of science, and all the interactive exhibits involving balance, sight, muscle power, etc. would tell a kid far more of how their body works than some diagrams and a couple of skeletons, because it engages them more.