Technology, Orientations, and the Land of Oz

In a moment of bravery, I invited eight unacquainted teenagers to the Michigan State University Museum and allowed actually encouraged them to tell me what they liked and didnt like about our museum and museums in general. And they did! Teams were then turned loose in the halls with clipboards, a tape recorder and the goal of developing their own version of an orientation to each floor. They were at first shy, goofy, sarcastic and then animated, excited, enthused and finally, thoughtfbl. reflective and productive. They wrote and audio taped their own narration, digitized the narration and ventured into editing the digitized sound. A moment of excitement came when one team discovered that they could electronically cut out a mis-pronunciation of the Capital city of the Aztec EmpireTenochtitlan and then paste in a new pronunciation.