ASTC Day 1
By Bianca Rodrigues
October 31, 2013
I recently attended ASTC—Association of Science Technology Centers in Albuquerque, New Mexico (also known as Breaking Bad territory). I was amazed by the interactive and unique exhibits I encountered, as well as the cool museums and science centers that attended.
On Day 1 we had a full day of sessions geared towards empowering museum directors and exhibit designers to create meaningful exhibits in order to engage their visitors.
As many of you know, End Point has installed our Liquid Galaxy display platform at several museums throughout the country and world, at places like the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, the San Jose Tech Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. Our experience working with museums has been absolutely positive thus far, so we wanted to meet others within the industry to not only promote the Liquid Galaxy further, but also learn how to expand our offerings for our museum clients.
One of the best sessions I attended was called Gaming in Museums to Engage Audiences. Experts from the Science Museum of Minnesota, Carnegie Science Center and the American Museum of Natural History all shared how they have utilized gaming experiences to enhance the visitor experience at their institutions. I especially enjoyed Keith Braafladt’s talk about how he utilized the MIT Scratch software at the Science Museum of Minnesota. For those of you not familiar, Scratch is an open-source educational programming language that was developed by the MIT Media Lab. Keith illustrated how they used this language to create “Scratch Day” at their museum, which is comprised of a series of workshops and activities to help their visitors experience interactive Scratch creations.
The session definitely inspired me to come back with some ideas for incorporating game design and concepts within our own Liquid Galaxy content program. With the ability to explore Google Earth, Ocean, Moon and Mars on the Liquid Galaxy, we have limitless possibilities to help our exhibit visitors, both young and old, experience the beauty of our galaxy.
If you are a museum that would like to incorporate games or other types of content on your own Liquid Galaxy, contact us!
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