Staff from the London Children’s Museum, along with Brooklyn Children’s Museum and Madison Children’s Museum, shared their experiences in modifying teen engagement within their museums to allow for it to be teen-interest led and influenced. Presenters discussed assessing teen engagement in children’s museums, creating sustained and successful teen employment through community-oriented workforce development, and developing youth directed approaches to teen programming within their museums. In addition, a framework was shared that can be used in your own museum. Watch the recording.
Vanessa Eastmure, Exhibits and Collections Manager, London Children’s Museum (Ontario, Canada)
Jessie Collins, Education Manager, London Children’s Museum (Ontario, Canada)
Kate Mirand Calleri, Director of Education, Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Rayna Cunningham, Outreach Coordinator, Madison Children’s Museum
Take your education programming beyond sensory rooms and adaptability boxes and explore intentionally inclusive programming for children with exceptionalities. Join museum colleagues and disability advocates who have journeyed into inclusive programming by designing programs that allow exceptional children to experience the museum and with their peers in a fully inclusive environment. Attendees will learn how to identify and utilize local resources as well as review strategies for curating and designing for exceptional children. Watch the recording.
Emily Woods-Johnson, Director of Education, Glazer Children’s Museum
Claire Stockman, VP of Education, Creative Discovery Museum
Blair Donnelly-Mason, CTRS, Program Manager, Treatment and Research Institute fro Autism Spectrum Disorders, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center
Liz Burke, Human Services Practitioner, Center for Autism & Related Disabilities at University of South Florida
Learn how to courageously challenge the status quo in your organization by infusing playful learning with innovative leadership practices. Session presenters will demonstrate how to tap into the power of play to spark low-risk internal cultural transformations. Creatively divergent, open-ended, and reliable approaches to playful leadership will be shared. Participants will have an opportunity to jam with other playful leaders in design-oriented breakout rooms. Watch the recording. Note: breakout rooms were not recorded.
Christian Greer, EdD, President & CEO, Michigan Science Center
Carol Tang, PhD, Executive Director, Children’s Creativity Museum
Tifferney White, CEO, Louisiana Children’s Museum
Our guest-facing teams power the play in children’s museums. Learn about effective ways to build capacity in your guest-facing team through engaging professional development that will ensure a stellar guest experience. Three museums will share strategies, tools, and resources for engaging training and ongoing learning and growth opportunities. Watch the recording.
Hardin Engelhardt, Chief Learning Officer, Marbles Kids Museum (moderator)
Robin Mangum, Learning Engagement Developer, Marbles Kids Museum
Kiersten Dittrich, Director of Visitor Services, Discovery Museum
Cassie Coffey, Guest Experience Senior Manager, DuPage Children’s Museum
Thinking about submitting a session proposal for InterActivity 2025? Register for this Session Proposal Writing webinar. We’ll review all sections of the proposal form, give tips on writing learning outcomes and session plans. Get inspiration from learning more about the theme and insight about how the Program Committee selects proposals for inclusion in the program. Watch the recording and review the presentation slides. More information about submitting a session proposal can be found on the Call for Session Proposals webpage.
Victoria Garvin, ACM
Kristin Leigh, Co-Executive Director of Explora
Joe Hastings, Co-Executive Director of Explora
Meredith Maple-Gitters, Executive Director of the Fairbanks Children’s Museum and Co-Chair of the IA25 Program Committee
Join ACM and the Association of Science & Technology Centers (ASTC) to learn about the NSF-funded Cambio program and how to apply for its final cohort. This brief webinar will include application tips and a live Q & A. Applications will be open from September 6 until November 1, 2023.
Cambio—meaning “change”—is a yearlong program that aims to advance equity starting with museums’ capacity to support Latinx participation in STEM. This funded professional development experience is led by the Exploratorium and CCLI (Cultural Competence Learning Institute), a collaborative partnership between ACM, ASTC, the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, and the Garibay Group. Visit CambioExperience.org to learn more.
Monday, July 17, 2023, 3:00 ET
The 2023 ACM-ASTC Workforce Survey Report is a collaborative data collection initiative to help the museum field understand overarching workforce trends in a dynamic world and is one of the most comprehensive sources of information on staffing and compensation in the museum field. Attend this webinar for a walk through the data and its application at your museum.
Thursday, June 22, 2023, 2:00 ET
The research teams at ACM and Knology discussed the new ACM Trends Data Hub, an online dashboard that will allow museums to access their own data, compare their museum to field-wide averages, and benchmark their museum to other museums of similar scale or location throughout the U.S. The data is pulled from U.S. Internal Revenue Form 990 (Form 990) and self-reported data from museums. The data can be viewed through operational groups related to attendance, income, expenses, and staff. This comparative data will support future forecasting and highlight trends in children’s museums of the same scale and service. Watch the recording. See also the report, Understanding National Averages.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. EDT
Watch this webinar recording for tips on writing a compelling session proposal, plus, learn how the Program Committee rates and selects proposals for inclusion in the conference, and what attendees want most from sessions. InterActivity session proposal submission deadline: July 31.
Tuesday, September 20, 2022, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EDT
To serve your military community well, you must first determine their needs, tailor programs to fill gaps in services, and then measure your effectiveness. Join us to hear about and discuss important steps in these processes. Greentrike (Children’s Museum of Tacoma) highlight what they’ve learned about military families in their work to open and pilot programs at the Children’s Museum at Joint Base Lewis McChord, the first children’s museum on a U.S. military installation. An evaluation tool and companion guidebook developed specifically for these purposes will also be shared. Download the webinar recording.
Presenters
Kimberly McKenney, Planning & Evaluation Director, Greentrike
Yve Susskind, PhD, Lead Evaluator, Praxis Associates
Tuesday, August 23, 2022, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EDT
ACM members and non-members alike are invited to submit a session proposal for InterActivity 2023, April 26-28 in New Orleans, hosted by the Louisiana Children’s Museum. Join this webinar for tips on writing a compelling session proposal, how the Program Committee rates and selects proposals for inclusion in the conference, and what attendees want most from sessions. Download the webinar recording.
Presenters
Victoria Garvin, Sr. Director, Professional Development, ACM
Lauren Clay, Interim CEO, Louisiana Children’s Museum
Roxane Hill, Executive Director, The Regnier Family Wonderscope Children’s Museum of Kansas City
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EDT
Encore presentation of the highly acclaimed InterActivity 2022 session with initial findings from the interPLAY project, an National Science Foundation-funded project, included a draft framework with emerging characteristics of playful STEM exhibit engagement for young children (ages 3-8). Attendees were prompted to give feedback and share their experiences as the project team continues to refine the framework.
Speakers
Jennifer Rehkamp, Director, Research, Association of Children’s Museum
Kelly Hoke, Researcher, The STEM Research Center, Oregon State University
Wednesday, July 13, 2022, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EDT
Are you prepared? Learn what you need to know about creating an emergency and disaster plan—or ensuring that your existing plan is current and inclusive of a range of possible situations. Join the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the Association of Children’s Museums, experts from the museum community, and relevant Federal agencies for this informational session about preparing your facility and staff for emergency situations.
Friday, June 24, 2022, 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m. EDT
As children’s museum professionals, we have an opportunity to support families and children experiencing trauma and stress through our exhibitions and programming, and to foster long-term social-emotional learning (SEL), kindness, collaboration, healing, love, and resilience in our kids and our communities.
In this webinar/community forum from the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM), you will be inspired to take action with activities and programs you can do in your own organization. Hear about XOXO: An Exhibition about Love and Forgiveness from Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, as well as programming (both facilitated and unfacilitated) the Children’s Creativity Museum has developed to accompany this exhibition. Speakers from both museums will provide you with elements you can use for free and share research-based practices to provide the best outcomes for your visitors.
The webinar will conclude with time to hear from you about the needs in your museum and community. How can ACM help you as you serve your children, families, and communities in this moment?
Speakers
Keni Sturgeon, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Association of Children’s Museums (Moderator)
Anne Fullenkamp, Senior Director, Center for Creative Experiences, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
Carol Tang, PhD, Executive Director, Children’s Creativity Museum and Board Member, Association of Children’s Museums
Katie Todd, Director of Learning and Research, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EST
Don’t miss this upcoming ACM webinar on March 30, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EST. Learn from two innovative partnerships: the Utica Children’s Museum and ICAN are creating a Family Resource Center which will serve as a hub for learning, wellness, connectedness, and fun in one location, and Second Story and Beyond® that will be a full-fledged children’s museum within a city library where the storylines and exhibits grow out of literacy and book themes, as well as being purposefully designed to incorporate multiple themes changed throughout the year. Each partnership is greater than the sum of its parts. Can you use these funding models to do the same?
Speakers
Barbara Punt, Punt Consulting Group
Donna Migliaccio, Utica Children’s Museum
Steve Bulger, ICAN
Julie Sowles, Rancho Cucamonga Public Library
Wess Garcia, Rancho Cucamonga Public Library
Tuesday, October 26, 2021, 2:00–3:00 p.m. ET
Join this webinar to learn more about the new Museums for Digital Learning (MDL), a unique platform that provides K-12 educators with access to museum content-based resources for use in and outside the classroom. MDL was developed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Field Museum, and History Colorado. MDL enables museums to share their content in the form of digital educational resources (called “Resource Kits“). MDL is eager to welcome more museums to join and contribute their content. Broaden your museum’s reach by leveraging content developed during the pandemic.
Speaker
Melissa de Bie, Director of Collections Access | Senior Registrar, History Colorado
Webinar RecordingsACM members can find past webinar recordings in the Online Member Resource Library on ACM Groupsite. For more information or to join ACM Groupsite, contact Membership@ChildrensMuseums.org. |
