Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Focus In Play

A complete Summary of Presentations from the ACM InterActivity PreConference Workshop held at DuPage Children's Museum in 2007 is available in the Family Resource Center in the Museum--the podcast covers the keynote speaker portion of this conference, provided online to give you an idea of the content included in the summary.

Focus In Play Page

Friday, April 6, 2007

Everyone's 15 minutes of fame online

It’s fun to find yourself online. Many people will “Google” themselves to see whether they have any listings. There’s a vicarious thrill to seeing your name in print and online. Now, with YouTube, you can also see yourself or your organization in video. Here are two examples of videos showing DuPage Children’s Museum:

Larnie Fox, a nationally-known artist, has a kinetic sculpture on display as part of our Wild Wings: Animals in Artland exhibition.



And someone posted visitors dancing to the beat in the sensory room:



This brings up interesting points. For years, museums have dealt with whether they are able to take pictures of people in the museum and use of these images in advertising, brochures, or grant reports. Generally, as a public site, it isn’t required to gain permission. On the other hand, with images of children, it is important for museums to get photography permissions from the parents or guardian. It’s a simple matter of respect for minors and safety. But with the prevalence of image and video on the internet, you can be recognized anywhere. If individuals can take video and post it from a museum, even if the museum isn’t listed, who else can link to it? Who else can identify the site? What if the poster doesn’t want the site listed to keeps some anonymity, but it is recognized and shared in other links?

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Cold Can't Stop Creativity!


Cold Can't Stop Creativity!

The creativity and artistic expression of children is never more obvious than in a visit to the Museum. On one of our recent snow-and-ice-filled days it wasn't the Museum's highly trained designers coming up with a new exhibit - it was the kids themselves! An original, interactive art display had been created by some visitors who realized they could use their hands to make unique designs on some frozen over panes of glass in DCM's Good Show! Gallery. The results were truly beautiful and reminded us all of just how imaginative our most important visitors really are.