Describes the Peers on Contemporary Art (POCA) program at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), for which 9th-12th grade students act as tour guides. Focuses on issues such as the students' role in curriculum planning, the application and training process, description of the tours, and reasons for POCA's success.…

Highlights some practical applications for art and river education to encourage teachers to create such programs. Describes the "Art and River" Program that consists of four half-day lessons at a river park. Discusses the importance of rivers and Native American beliefs about the land and rivers. Lists additional resources. (CMK)

Proposes an activity that acts as an end-of-the-year review for seventh-grade history in which the students demonstrate their knowledge by applying for a position in an art museum. Explains that the students choose one display and culture presented in the student-created museum and advertise their culture in a three minute presentation. (CMK)

Identifies five types of museum accessibility: (1) physical; (2) socio-cultural; (3) economic; (4) sensory; and (5) intelligence/learning accessibility. Considers ways to coordinate museum services to ensure accessibility for potential museum patrons who are disabled. Describes various programs launched by the National Museum of Natural History in…

Describes the process of creating the website entitled "At Home in the Heartland Online" that corresponds to the exhibit bearing the same name at the Illinois State Museum. Expounds that the website represents the successful collaboration among three different learning environments: the World Wide Web, the exhibit, and the classroom.…

Discusses ways to introduce young adults to materials dealing with the Holocaust and suggests a variety of resources to help young adult librarians. Highlights include meeting the user's needs in terms of level of interest; nonbook media, especially films; Internet sites; reference titles; and museums and other organizations. (LRW)

Can going to an art museum make elementary school students better learners? It can if they are participating in Thinking Through Art, an innovative partnership uniting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Boston Public Schools (BPS), and Visual Understanding in Education (VUE), a nonprofit educational research group committed to improving…

In recognition of the fact that science centers and other informal educational institutions can play a role in the reform of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, several major research and professional programs are currently underway. This article discusses one such effort, the Center for Informal Learning and…

It is widely acknowledged that there are problems with school science in many developed countries of the world. Such problems manifest themselves in a progressive decline in pupil enthusiasm for school science across the secondary age range and by the fact that fewer students are choosing to study the physical sciences at higher levels and as…

Reflective and collaborative learning can help teachers to better understand their students. Preservice teachers are busy managing initial experiences and often do not have the time nor the depth of experience from which to reflect more on the art of teaching. The University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio, provides such an opportunity for early…

In this article, the author describes the importance of technology in distance learning for elementary education. Imagine having museums and expert teachers available at one's request. In their Rural Hall, North Carolina, elementary school, teachers and students just walk down the hall to the distance learning classroom and connect in a few…

Thinking about the museum's engagement in educational programmes is increasingly adopting a more critical perspective on the implications of a programme in authorizing and defining particular knowledge. While objects are still invoked to define history and culture and to underscore their authority, the museum's claim to educational purposes is…

In this article, the author shares her experience working with preservice teachers in a hands-on museum exhibit. The preservice teachers' responses suggest that the experience of working in a hands-on museum exhibit can be a valuable part of an elementary social studies methods course. Adequately preparing elementary social studies methods…

Both teacher and student editions of a guide for a tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, designed for students in an intensive English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) program at Temple University (Pennsylvania) are presented here. They were intended to provide a content-based tour of a local art museum for university ESL students that ESL teachers…

Students who work at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California learn about science by explaining to the visitors from all over the world how the museum's exhibits work. The students are teen-agers who also come from all over the world to be "Explainers" for the Exploratorium. They go through a training period to learn the basics of…