Exploratorium Website Background
www.exploratorium.edu

Online since 1993, the Exploratorium was the first independent museum to build a site on the World Wide Web. Included in the site are more than 25,000 webpages and many sound and video files, exploring hundreds of different topics. We currently serve 28 million visitors a year on the site—over 50 times the number of visitors who come to the museum in San Francisco. That makes us one of the most visited museum websites in the world.

The Exploratorium’s website is an extension of the experiences on the museum’s floor. It provides “real” experiences for our online audience, not “virtual exhibits.” The medium of the Internet makes it possible to reach homes and schools all over the world. This has changed the way formal and informal learning takes place, both in the classroom and in the home. The Exploratorium online, and the resources it provides, are available 24 hours a day, worldwide, to anyone with an Internet connection.

Many of the resources on the Exploratorium Web site are examples of very simple uses of information technology, but thoughtfully implemented. For example, the site contains instructions for over 500 experiments, all of which may be viewed on any type of Web browser, with even the slowest connection, and are easily printed out.

Other types of content have required more creative use of existing or new technologies. In order to demonstrate certain phenomena, for instance, we have created over 30 interactive online exhibits using Shockwave, Flash, QuickTime VR, and other technologies. Many of these online exhibits are patterned after real exhibits on the museum floor.

The Exploratorium is well known for its use of webcasting, in which we broadcast live video and/or audio directly from the museum floor (or from satellite feeds in the field, at such locations as Antarctica or the Belize rainforest) onto the Internet. Webcasts provide access to special events, scientists, and other museum resources for audiences on the Web. Using video and audio with text-based articles and features allows a visitor to choose among different methods of learning about a particular topic. Video and audio also provide the ability to hear or view interviews with scientists, “meet” interesting people, or tour unusual locations, from factories to particle accelerators.

The Exploratorium’s focus is on investigating the science behind the ordinary subjects and experiences of people’s lives. The topics themselves provide “hooks” that get people excited about science. The Accidental Scientist project produced online content that engaged visitors in the science of everyday activities of cooking, making music, and gardening. As we investigate these topics, we also look at the historical and social issues surrounding them, thus providing a context for scientific exploration.

Selected Exploratorium Web Projects and Resources

Global Climate Change
www.exploratorium.edu/climate/biosphere/index.html
This site draws together real-time and near-real-time data from multiple sources to bring awareness of how human activity affect’s the earth’s climate. At this website, you can explore scientific data relating to the atmosphere, the oceans, the areas covered by ice and snow, and the living organisms in all these domains. You’ll also get a sense of how scientists study natural phenomena — how researchers gather evidence, test theories, and come to conclusions.

Microscope Imaging Station
www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/index.php
Get a close-up view of life in action; stem cells, fruit flies, and more!

Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists
icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/
With the International Polar Year, we gave polar scientists cameras and blogs, trained them in telling stories and asked them to document their field work in real time. The public follows along on their adventures and sees what it’s like to be a research scientist in the Arctic or Antarctica, in addition to webcasts with our crew.

Remembering Nagasaki
www.exploratorium.edu/nagasaki/commentary/commentary2.html
As part of our investigation into the nature of memory, the Exploratorium invited people to share their recollections of learning about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were particularly interested in how people receive and remake stories of events they did not directly experience. We received hundreds of replies from all over the world, representing a wide range of age, ethnic background, and perspective. A representative set of comments is posted here.

Mars
www.exploratorium.edu/mars
Since 2004, Mars captures webcasts in conjunction with the landing of Spirit and Opportunity on Mars, including field trips to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, interviews with scientists, investigations into what it would be like to camp on Mars, and an exploration of Mars in popular culture. When the Mars Phoenix Lander safely parachuted to the surface of the red planet on May 25, 2008, the Exploratorium continued to present Webcasts on this latest Mars mission.

Origins
www.exploratorium.edu/origins/
Scientists around the world are searching for evidence to find the origins of life, matter, and the universe. Through live webcasts and supplementary web resources, the Exploratorium gives visitors a chance to meet the people, places, tools, and current investigations in science today.

The Accidental Scientist
www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/index.html
This site brings science closer to the public by demonstrating science in everyday life. Online visitors can take virtual field trips to a lollipop factory, ask questions in a bulletin board, read articles, and participate in webcast demonstrations. Topics covered include cooking, music, and gardening.

Candy Home Page
www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/index.html

Visit a Lollipop Factory
www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/kendon.html

Sports Science
www.exploratorium.edu/sport/index.html

Online Forum — The Science of Food
http://sodium.exploratorium.edu/cgi-bin/yabb-acc_sci/YaBB.pl

Playful Inquiry Environments
http://pie.exploratorium.edu/scrapbook/index.html
The Exploratorium has been engaging educators and visitors in different hands-on workshops to explore the role of playful inquiry in teaching and learning. Educators and visitors are invited to participate in construction activities from building camera kites to sponge-driven water pumps.

Kite Camera
http://pie.exploratorium.edu/scrapbook/kite/index.html

Understanding Motion (Making Automata)
http://pie.exploratorium.edu/scrapbook/cabaret/index.html

Exploratorium Digital Library
http://sagan.exploratorium.edu/Cumulus5/ed/edam-ed-search-basket.html
The Exploratorium has a large collection (9000+) of digital assets that are free to educators. This image library is the start of a larger effort to create a digital library called Exploratorium Online with collections of Exploratorium-inspired teaching and learning materials.

The Electronic Guidebook
www.exploratorium.edu/guidebook
Wireless devices can help extend one’s experience in the museum while at the museum and back at home after a visit. We are designing handheld computer content that can be used as a mobile training tool for field trip Explainers, and designing lightweight tokens to allow visitors to bookmark the exhibits they visit and view additional related online resources when they get home.

The Solar Eclipse — View from Zambia, Turkey, China
www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/
Event-based phenomena, like solar eclipses, attract online visitors to the Exploratorium website from around the world.

Science Snacks
www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/
Science Snacks are no longer only available to teachers. These pages make Science Snacks available to anyone interested in learning about science or helping others learn about science. Try it for yourself! You might be delighted to find how well hands-on discovery works.

Ten Cool Sites
www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/sciencesites.html
A regular feature since 1995, online visitors can see the most recent top 10 sites on the Web or search the archive by subject.

Exploratorium Online Audience Research Facts (2006)

1. The words people use most to find us online:

science 3.82%
solar 1.59%
exploratorium 1.43%

2. People most often access the Exploratorium’s website through the following entry points:

Front Page
(www.exploratorium.edu) 12.74%
Common Cents Interactive Game
(www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/common_cents) 9.18%
Skateboard Science
(www.exploratorium.edu/skateboarding) 2.41%
Science Explorer
(www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer) 2.28%
3. The most requested downloaded documents:

· Ron’s Ellipse Movie — www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/age/images/ellipse.mov
· Temple Movie — www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/temple/images/temple.mov
· Cow Eye Dissection — www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/cow_eye/cow_eye.pdf
· Hockey Slapshot Movie — www.exploratorium.edu/hockey/movies/slapshot.mov

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