Give a listen to the latest episode of "Object Oriented," the podcast on digital learning in collections-based museums, hosted by Eve Gaus of the Field Museum, Barry Joseph of the American Museum of Natural History and myself. In this show, we focus on what's new at our respective institutions, and man are we up to …
For the final day of the TechTeens program last Saturday, I had my group of teens play the game "Spaceteam" together for the first time. It's one of my favorite games ever, and seeing them so delighted to play it together was wonderful to witness. "Asteroid! Flip!"
What would happen if you let 40 teens spend the weekend at your museum and challenged them to create digital games on complex sustainability topics? That's what we wanted to find out, so we organized the Science Game Jam last month. Over the weekend of April 24-25 at the California Academy of Sciences, nine teams of …
This past weekend at the California Academy of Sciences, nine teams of teens from across the Bay Area (including SF, Oakland, North Bay, and the peninsula) gathered to rapidly develop digital climate games on the topics of Bay Area food, water and energy for the 2nd annual Science Game Jam. The game jammers were ably …
I’m in a dance battle with Oliver, one of our teen museum volunteers, trying to move like a peacock spider in love. His moves are slightly better than mine — his head grows to enormous proportions and sprouts antennae. Then fuzzy legs spring from his abdomen. I am … still me. My dance moves just …
I'm excited to share the news that the California Academy of Sciences is hosting our second annual Science Game Jam from April 23-24 at our museum. It's going to be a fun and exciting weekend of game jamming around science topics for select Bay Area teens. Applications to participate in the jam have just opened, and …
I finally got a much coveted "women in science" LEGO set, which took the internet by storm a couple of years ago! For those that don't know, LEGOS has a system called "LEGO Ideas" for people to propose to the toy company sets that they want produced. If at least 10,000 people vote for that design, …
The year two-thousand and fifteen was a HUGE one for the Digital Learning program at the California Academy of Sciences. We’ve had a lot of changes, pivots, sad goodbyes, and successes over the past twelve months that are important to acknowledge. Farewell, Christine / Welcome, Jeff! Over the summer, we bid a fond farewell to …
This weekend was the first national Climate Game Jam, happening at sites all around the country. For us, it was a super fun and inspiring two days of game hacking, science exploration, and team building, all to educate young people about climate change, and what they can do about it. The Climate Game Jam was …
A couple of months ago, as a going away surprise for a colleague, I created "Analog Spaceteam," a non-digital version of the wonderful mobile game of the same name. It was fun trying to come up with ways to capture the spirit and energy of the digital game, but adding the fun of having physical …