This article describes the Multimedia Arts Education Program (MAEP), an ongoing, intensive after school computer-mediated art technology program begun in 1996 by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) in Tucson, Arizona. This five-semester program targets at-risk middle school youth from disadvantaged families. Students worked with professional artist/teachers, learning to do computer graphics and publishing, language arts and word processing, computer animation and video production.
Independent, Community-Based Organizations are threatened by the recent movement, supported by government money, to place after school programs in the same schools children attend all day. This article emphasizes the difference between community-based and school-centric afterschool programming.
After school programs are uniquely suited to encouraging the kinds of sustaining “work” that help children develop their special abilities and a sense of identity.
Drugs and alcohol, free time and empty houses are readily available in affluent communities. But positive role models and meaningful activities are often in short supply.
This article addresses the ways in which an afterschool theater program creates an experience which builds confidence and encourages authentic work on the part of young people. It provides guidelines for practitioners for creating an atmosphere where learning can thrive.
While much of the current concern over the literacy development of low- and moderate income children focuses on schools (and, to a lesser degree, on parents), many observers are arguing for a role for other institutions. In particular, funders are turning to afterschool programs to address this critical developmental task. This paper explores the roles afterschool programs can and do play in the literacy development of low-income children, drawing on surveys and observations of afterschool programs in Chicago, New York, and Seattle.
One method for studying visitors in museums is to audiotape their conversations while videotaping their behavior. Many researchers inform visitors of such recordings by posting signs in the areas under scrutiny. An earlier study tested the assumption that visitors notice, read and understand posted signs (Gutwill, 2003). Interviews revealed that 75 percent of visitors leaving a recording area had read and understood the signs. This article describes our attempt at increasing this percentage by placing additional signs on the exhibit elements being used, as well as on the camera itself
This article describes a front-end evaluation conducted by researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Prospect Park Zoo in planning for the new "In Living Color" exhibit. The evaluation examined how the zoo's average young visitor--a 5.1 year old--thinks and feels about animal coloration.
This article describes an exhibit evaluation project at the San Diego Natural History Museum, funded by NSF in 2001, which took a participatory approach to better understand their audience. The authors, two participants in this project, discuss their motivations and goals, useful models and lessons learned from a special needs focus group.
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Nancy Owens RennerMarianna Adams
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In this article, VSA President Deborah Perry presents an overview of the work of the Visitor Studies Association over the previous few months. Topics include the Executive Committee, Conference Committee, resource development, Board development, professional development, and publications.
This article describes an evaluation project that measured the effectiveness of particular communication strategies in the Kelp Forest feeding program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. During the Kelp Forest program a volunteer guide (docent) delivers a narration about the Kelp Forest exhibit and has a conversation with a diver feeding the fish in the exhibit. The program concludes with the diver and the volunteer taking questions from the audience. The communication strategies measured in this study were identified by The Ocean Project (TOP), a collaborative initiative where the Monterey Bay
This article discusses the design of casinos, specifically principles of visitor orientation in casinos, and how these principles relate to museums. Floor plans of casinos are compared to floor plans of museums and other visitor centers. Author Stephen Bitgood advises, "Don't follow casino design if you want to be friendly to visitors."