Cross Fertilization Between Museums and Schools, Science and Art, History and Multimedia

n/

School, Museum, University: A community for science education

For almost twenty years, the Physics History Group, the University History Museum and the Physics Museum of Pavia University have been elaborating, with schools of all levels, a year-long shared project, leading to the development of strong, long-lasting relationships between the participants and of a community of practice. Within it, new pathways are sought, to allow all participants to live meaningful experiences, to bring school closer to cultural heritage and the local community, and to foster the development of a scientific identity in learners. A methodology including historical-scientific workshops and a focus on Nature of Science was developed. Students are led through educational paths customized according to teachers’ requests and produce science stories, which are shared with the community. Because of the pandemic, only upper secondary schools were involved in the last project, Show & Tell. New activities were introduced: a team of students were tasked with online and offline communication, old instruments in schools’ collections were put back into use and several final events were organized. Open interviews with teachers highlighted several positive outcomes. Everyone worked alongside, sharing stories, experiences, competencies, intellectual pleasure, codified knowledge and tacit knowledge, in a non-judging environment

Il Sistema Museale dell’Università di Pavia ai tempi del coronavirus

Kosmos, the new cultural project of the University of Pavia for its Natural History collections Kosmos, the new Natural History Museum, adopted for its new exhibition strategies dedicated to the accessibility of the collections. The gallery was therefore enriched with exhibits and games with the aim of conveying scientific content in an engaging form. For guided tours and workshops Kosmos makes use of the collaboration of ADMaiora, a company that provides educational services. Together with the museum’ staff ADMaiora has developed an educational offer capable of making museum content accessible at all levels, including audiences who present disabilities. To support the visit few didactic kits have been added and a new palaeontology laboratory kit for small groups with cognitive disabilities has been created. Finally, a "social history" document that adopt Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) was drawn up to prepare children with specific relational disabilities to the visit

MOBILE APPLICATION WITH AUGMENTED REALITY FOR THE TOURIST EXPERIENCE: A CASE STUDY IN THE DISTRICT OF CASA GRANDE, PERUVIAN NORTH COAST

When visiting the Casa Grande District, tourists arrive at the Main Square, from where they see around them many buildings to which they only take pictures and then leave, but they do not know about the history and value that each of them represents. Thus, the objective of this research is to value the diverse architectural heritage that the Casa Grande District has and at the same time improve the tourist experience, through the use of a Mobile Application with Augmented Reality. To carry out the experimental research, the agile Mobile-D methodology was used, which has 5 phases: Exploration, Initiation, Production, Stabilization and Testing;  in the Research Design, two groups were used:  Experimental Group (Ge) and Control  Group (Gc), while Student's t-test was used to validate the hypotheses.  Finally, the results revealed that the Mobile Application with augmented reality presented better results in the Ge with respect to the Gc in each of the indicators: time and cost of access to information, the number of visits and the satisfaction of tourists

DESCRIBING THE EDUCATIONAL ROLE OF NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS: AN ANALYSIS TOOL FOR PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE TEACHERS

This study presents a tool for description and potential analysis of the educational role of the Science and Technology museum. This tool has been constructed from the point of view of formal education and it is proposed as a framework for the approach of the science/technology museum from the teachers and education administrators. More specifically, the tool is, at first, described in terms of structure, content and functionality and, afterwards, examples are provided for cases of international, national and local natural history museums (Natural History Museum in Paris, Goulandris Natural History Museum in Athens and University of Patras Zoology Museum accordingly). Finally, there is a discussion regarding the suitability of this tool to inform, instruct and train future and in-service teachers in aspects of museum education. Article visualizations

History of science and science museums: an enriching partnership for elementary school science

The activity presented in this article is intended for elementary school students and focus on the pioneering oceanographic work of the Portuguese King Carlos I. This activity involves the exploration of the exhibits belonging to two different science museums, the Aquarium Vasco da Gama and the Maritime Museum. Students were asked to study fish adaptations to deep sea, through the exploration of a fictional story, also based on historical data from the work of the King that served as a guiding script for all the subsequent tasks. In both museums, students had access to observations of: historical collections of organisms, oceanographic biological sampling instruments, fish gears and ships. They could also observe the characteristics and adaptations of diverse deep-sea fish species. The present study aimed to analyse the impact of this activity on students’ scientific knowledge, on their understanding of the nature of science and on the development of transversal skills. All students considered the project very interesting. The obtained results suggest that the activity promoted not only the understanding of scientific concepts, but also the development of knowledge about science itself and the construction of scientific knowledge. This emphasizes the relevance of creating activities informed by the history of science. As a final remark we suggest that the partnership between elementary schools and museums should be seen as an educational project approach, in which the teacher has to assume a key, mediating role between the school and the museums.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio