Category Archives: Digital Playground

This is where my colleagues and I try out the latest and greatest digital tools to evaluate if they have learning potential within museums.

Google Glass and Museum-based Learning: A Day in D.C.

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Barry

I don’t know much about Google Glass. I don’t own a pair. But I am fascinated by how electronic wearables, augmented reality, and cloud-based mobile computing are changing how we interact with the people and places in our lives. To … Continue reading →

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Taking the New MakerBot Digitizer For a Spin

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Barry

Last Mother’s day, my two children and I took my wife to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the day. We went to see the special exhibit, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, which highlighted the “vital relationship between fashion and art … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: Bone Wars – a Paleo Card Game

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Barry

As part of our recent Digital Playground series on science card games, Nathan, Ariam and I followed-up Parasites Unleashed with the rollicking Bone Wars: The Game of Ruthless Paleontology. Published by the same company, Zygote, this game was a winner. … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: Parasites Unleashed! Card Game

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Barry

Recently, in our weekly Digital Playground (the exploration place in Education where we try out new and interesting digital tools and explore their educational affordances) a team of Museum educators began a multi-session series playing card games to explore relevant … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: Driving Sphero, a Robotic Ball, From Dinos to Outerspace

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Barry

This week, Nathan, Ariam and I brought the Sphero into our weekly digital playground. We wanted to learn what this new toy/ user-interface/ development platform might afford for informal science learning. First, what is Sphero? As you can see above, … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: Reading This Might Make a Spaceship Roll Across Your Screen

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Barry

Spacecraft 3D is a free mobile app produced by (for?) NASA. I first saw it in action last month at the Adler’s Space Visualization Lab. Select a spaceship – say, Curiosity on Mars – point the camera phone at a … Continue reading →

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A Visit to the Future: oblong’s Mezzanine & Greenhouse

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Barry

What you picture when you hear the phrase “Minority Report” says a lot about you. For some it refers to the short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. For others it refers to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise blockbuster … Continue reading →

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Capturing a Dinosaur: Using Digital Tools to Reproduce a Physical Model

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Barry

When I first visited the library at the AMNH, I was amazed by all of the physical items in the collection. As a public library, I expected to find books and publications on file, with the special Natural History and … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: MaKey MaKey

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Barry

In a recent digital playground, we decided to get our hands on a MaKey MaKey and see what we could do with it. What’s a MaKey MaKey? I was convinced to buy one ($50) when I read the following description … Continue reading →

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Digital Playground: “Video Tools for the Future”

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Barry

Jasper Visser’s blog The Museum of the Future just posted a fantastic round-up: “5 online video tools for the future: interactive, automated and embedded in the web“. They  include: Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker Galahad Qwiki Wibbitz All are quite interesting and … Continue reading →

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