Science & Arts
Cultures of innovation and creativity call for their citizens to participate, collaborate, network, and experiment. The debate about freedom and collective creativity is controversial and touches many cultural and social issues. In what way is...
Human Resources
Explainers – also known as mediators, museum educators, science communicators, edutainers, pilots, and others – have a strategic role in science centres and museums as facilitators of visitors’ learning, and more recently, as mediators in the...
Exhibit development
“Everything is broken!” This is a frequent complaint among visitors to science centres. But equally often, visitors think an exhibit is broken only because they didn’t understand how to use it properly. How do we prevent these two scenarios and...
Networking & Partnerships
Science centers and museums are usually non profit organizations which are currently confronted to look for generous contributors from individuals donators, corporations (huge or small), foundations and or public agencies. Certain types of...
Networking & Partnerships
The data we collect about institutions says a lot about how we perceive our mission. We can usually find data about the numbers of visitors and their demographic statistics, as well as financial data such as annual turnover and physical data such...
Education
Wheels give us freedom: Freedom to travel and freedom to learn science. Bicycles, skateboards, trains, cars, and escalators use wheels to help us move. When we make models of wheeled devices, they help us understand physics and give us the...
Science in Society
A number of playful discussion formats are being developed and used in science centres. In addition to aiding informal learning about science, these discussions also support participants in finding and expressing their own views based on facts...
Networking & Partnerships
Established centres have opportunities to build relationships with emerging centres in developing countries and/or different cultural settings. Emerging centres want to learn from established ones and connect with their ideas and exhibitions....
Science ♥ society
Derrick de Kerckhove
Derrick de Kerckhove, Professor at the Department of French and former Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, gave a speech entitled "Navigating among the shoals and reefs of social, state and...
Outreach
Different approaches to social networking are possible because it is a continuously evolving medium. But what seems to be of primary interest is stimulating dialogue. Compared to the official character of a press office, social networks allow...
Networking & Partnerships
This session will assess the contribution of the science centre community to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals established in the UN’s Declaration on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Toronto...
Research, theory & evaluation
Join this workshop to run an experiment – using real lab equipment – as if you were part of an actual research team looking for a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Science communicators will share their experiences of collaborating with...