Peak Experience Lab

Museum Pro Tip for everyone. Ask elders about their objects. It's so connecting! I asked my barber about some of the objects in his shop. He told me this clipper belonged to his father who was also a barber back in Lebanon- his home country. Now, my barber is a soft-spoken man. Reserved. Not much of a talker. After recounting the story about the clippers, he said to me "I'm glad you came in. You made my morning." What an earnest moment. Honestly, it made my morning too.

Objects are conduits for connection. And what people won't volunteer about themselves, they will often talk about through objects. And as people grow older, they have a treasure trove of memories waiting to be unearthed and cared for.
Try it. You won't be sorry.

"𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞."

This video is designed to address this complaint from museum educators and docents. So, yes audiences want to learn something new, but the "info delivery" should be designed in a way that leaves OUT information. This is what provokes conversation. That's why I call them Curiosity Catalysts.

[Museum Educators] 3 Ways To Get Visitors Talking Museum educators and docents often tell me that when they ask questions, visitors often don't want to talk. These 3 Curiosity Catalysts - that can be used in...

Opening my Facilitator's toolbox. In this interpretive planning exercise, we used heart-shaped glasses 👓 to see every aspect of a historical site through the lens of empathy.
The glasses - of course - add fun. But more than that, it's a way to send our brains a message - that we are literally trying to see in a new way (literally pink, green, orange etc). Novelty in small doses also helps our brains activate the right hemisphere's capacity for imagination.

Many thanks to Fairfax County Parks Authority (VA) and friends for embracing both this silly & scientific methodology and for coming through with fantastic ideas 💡

My buddy Shawn Halifax - in the back, looking like the empathy secret service. lol

Museum educators! This one is for you! Dialogue is the only teaching technique that is designed to open learners' minds to new perspectives - and isn't that exactly what we need right now? But I often see a fundamental misunderstanding of what dialogue really is and what it looks like in practice.

In this video, I explain the 3-step formula that I use to evaluate what qualifies as "dialogic" in a tour or visitor interaction. AND I show you what it looks like in practice. Spoiler - I play all the parts in this dramatization and show my more ridiculous side 🥸

Use this video to start conversations with your education staff or docent corps. And let me know if you'd like more of these kinds of videos!

[Museum Educators] Why Dialogue is Misunderstood & How to Spot the Difference + See it in action! Having a discussion or asking visitors questions is not necessarily "dialogue." Here is my 3-step formula for spotting dialogic interpretation and I'll show ...

"I'm asking them questions - why don't they want to talk?"
A common issue I hear from museum educators trying to ditch the old lecture-based tours. One problem is that we tend to rely too much on verbal questions as a tool.

One of the keys to getting visitors to talk is to give them a good 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐭 - a stimulus that is easy to understand, fun or provocative, and puts everyone in the group at the same level - no prior knowledge required. Try to make it visual or use other senses to grab attention.

An example you can use: The Disgust-o-meter. This is a tool that can be used to look at how culture affects what we think is disgusting. While disgust is a useful reflex is useful for survival (specifically in avoiding toxic things that can kill us), disgust is also VERY culturally developed. So we are often disgusted by cultural practices that are not our own. Or even values that are not our own. This subconscious emotion can lead to grave societal consequences.

Investigate your own bias using the Disgust-o-meter. And try it out with a group at your museum using objects or stories in an exhibition. Help them become aware of their feelings of disgust and to be curious about them.

For Fun Rate these things - all of which will not actually kill you:
1. A hair in your food at a restaurant
2. Bathing once a week
3. Wearing shoes in the house
4. Eating dried crickets

Follow up questions:
- Where do you think this disgust comes from (for you)? Where did you learn it?
- Do you think the emotion of disgust has ever led you to judge someone unfairly - either conscriously or unconsciously? Can you think of an example?

Why this activity works:
- Disgust is a human emotion that anyone can relate to. Anyone can speak from experience.
- Both kids and adults can both participate and can "rate" using a scale like this. It provides the right amount of scaffolding to start a discussion.
- The idea of "disgust" is novel. Novelty activates curiosity.
- It uses novelty to get at larger issues that need to be addressed in our society and helps us learn about ourselves.
- It provides a way for groups to discover differences in a safer, smaller-scale way and learn from each other.

To avoid stereotyping:
- Start with some norms or expectation setting like: "We are going to try a fun activity to try to notice how the emotion of disgust can lead to bias and judgement over others. So we need to be careful to use 'I' statements in stating our reactions rather than generalizing about an entire group. And I'm going to ask you to stay in a curious state of mind as we explore. Can everyone agree to stay curious, speak for themselves, and keep judgement in check?"

Watch as I try to activate my own kid's curiosity about colonial history using 5 evidence-based curiosity tactics. It was so cool to get to see my own child's brain at work! Spoiler alert - English colonists' underwear was a huge lightning rod for curiosity. Maybe more than I thought. So yay for underwear! But also I tried to contextualize the "fun facts" by framing within deeper context - cultural relativism. What one culture thinks is "normal" can be weird or even disgusting to another.

Related - I've been experimenting with video training - skill building- for Education Staff - training that is NOT watching a pre-recorded zoom meeting (those can be soooo boring). But we need more examples for educators that show teaching in action and that can be repeated each time we hire new people. Training that breaks down technique in an accessible and even entertaining way. Often, educators' primary training is following other educators. Not without merit, but this method alone often leads to parroting of bad habits with little opportunity to really dissect or analyze technique.

Let me know what you think. This one did get a bit long (38 min) but I decided I needed to just get it out there in the world rather than continually reinvent it.

Can I activate CURIOSITY about HISTORY in my own kid using these 5 tactics? [History Teaching Demo] Kids can get bored learning history. To turn boredom into curiosity, I learned these 5 tactics - as well as the basic mechanics of how curiosity works. And u...