Observations of museum visitors

Here are raw transcripts of observations made by Joi Podgorny while watching a facilitator (usually Sammy Landers) guide visitors through several GeoWall exhibits at SciTech Hands-on Museum in Aurora, IL. Also here are several post-session interviews.

Excuse the abbreviations and typos - Joi was furiously typing away on a laptop in the dark (GeoWalls work best without light) while the demos were going on.

Each transcript starts with a description of how many women (W), men (M), boys (B) and girls (G) were amongst the visitors. Other abbreviations: IMSA = Illinois Math and Science Academy. Some of the students from there were at SciTech for a field trip.

• 22 March 2004
• 24 March 2004
• 25 March 2004
• 26 March 2004
• interview1.txt
• interview2.txt
• interview3.txt
• interview4.txt
• interview5.txt
• interview6.txt
• interview7.txt
• interview8.txt
• interview9.txt

These exhibits present at SciTech at this time included

• APO : A walkthrough of a virtual model of the Apache Point Observatory site. Created by 2003-4 SCOPE/Cosmus project member Stephanie Andrews.
• SDSS : A flythrough of galaxies and quasars found by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Created by Cosmus members Dinoj Surendran and Mark Subbarao. Often referred to as the space exhibit.
• VERITAS : A walkthrough of a virtual model of the VERITAS telescope. Created by M3 Engineering, Stephanie Andrews, and Dinoj Surendran.
• Mars : an interactive globe of Mars, from Selden Ball's Planets for Partiview site.
• Ice Age : an interactive globe of Earth during the last ice age, compiled by Dinoj Surendran
• Virtual models of an angler fish, an ant, the Wright brother's plane, etc provided by the Electronic Visualization Lab at UIC.
• Virtual Harlem
• A model of earthquake patterns. This comes as part of the standard Immersaview distribution from the EVL. Sometimes referred to as the Seismology Exhibit.
• A model of the heart and lungs, created by the Rush Copley Medical Center. This comes as part of the standard Immersaview distribution from the EVL.

The first five exhibits listed above were installed at SciTech by Dinoj Surendran in March 2004. The SDSS exhibit replaced an earlier version created by Mark Subbarao in 2003.