Our research objective focused on monitoring students' mental effort and cognitive achievement to unveil potential effects of an instructional change in an out-of-school laboratory offering gene technology modules. Altogether, 231 students (12th graders) attended our day-long hands-on module. Within a quasi-experimental design, a treatment group…

In this paper we present a way to study science learning on a discursive level in a teaching activity designed for a museum of natural history. We used here an analysis of practical epistemologies. The method, which allows a description of students' meaning making in socially shared practices, has been used previously to analyze learning in…

This study explores the presence and impact of nonprofit arts and culture programs in partnership with Arizona's public schools. Arts and culture offerings are limited by many facets of the educational system, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), as evidenced by researchers and participants' responses in this study. The author argues…

The Australian Museum has been working with the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools over the past five years. Students aged from 5-18 years have been advising the Museum on the development of exhibitions and programs, as well as how the Museum can best use the digital environment to showcase its research and collections. This paper outlines…

Mobile phones have been steadily gaining appreciation among the museum community as a versatile tool. The new generation of mobile phones allows museums to imagine a whole new range of applications, including audiovisual personal tours and live-feed broadcasting. Personal tours using mobile phones are appealing to museum educators since patrons…

Background: In the 1950s and 1960s, many children experienced museums as dull and boring. Nowadays, museums seem to be much more conscious of their educational role and the need to make their exhibits attractive and interesting. Making use of narratives is one way of achieving this. Some scholars claim that narrative is central to meaning making…

The literature on globally networked learning environments (GNLEs) has predominantly focused on research or classroom partnerships in higher education that usually involve traditional students enrolled in traditional degree programmes. However, the driving motivation behind GNLEs--learning in partnership across institutional and national…

Little is known about the nature of teaching and the role of emotions in nonformal education. This is not surprising, given that nonformal education has many shades of meaning, limited literature exists about the realities of teaching in nonformal settings, and little has been written about the nature of emotions and teaching in formal settings,…

As executive director of a small community museum, the author is always seeking new and innovative ways to link the museum and its collection with the local community. The museum is located in Southern Ontario, on the shore of Lake Ontario, and comprises three restored homes dating from the period 1835-1849. Located in close proximity to the…

This pilot study aimed at developing and validating an evaluation model to assess the impact of participation in the National History Day in Ohio program (NHD-OH) on students academic achievement and intellectual growth by using as key indicators: a) High-stakes tests, i.e., Ohio Graduation Tests (OGT) in Social Studies, Reading and Writing; b)…

Historical organizations cannot continue to compete in the modern marketplace using traditional models for education program development. Social networking sites and new applications are shaping the way our audiences approach their work, even more so as Generation Y/Millennials begin to flood into the workforce, changing the demographic makeup,…

The National Science Museum (NSM) in Japan has recently completed a project using different types of visitor-oriented digital technologies. With sponsorship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the NSM team carried out a four-year study to examine how digital technologies can be used to enhance as well as educationally…

Many Japanese museums and other cultural institutions have been exploring ways to enrich visitors' experiences using new digital devices. This paper briefly describes some examples in Japan, ranging from a PDA, a mobile phone, podcasting, and an audio guide speaker-equipped vest to a Quick Response (QR) code on a brochure for downloading a short…

Portable terminals such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones are very convenient because it is possible to use them anytime and anywhere. Portable devices can be used for efficiently supplying various modes of information ranging from text and images to and audio and movies at the user's discretion. This mode of information…

Japanese mobile phones are increasingly being used as multimedia players. In response to this, some museums in Japan have introduced mobile phone audiovisual guides. This paper presents a trial run of a cross-institutional mobile phone audiovisual guide tour at Ueno Zoological Gardens and the National Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan.…