The chapter mentions the importance of relating one’s intuitive ideas of natural phenomena with actual explanations. I find this to be very relevant since many people develop ideas and explanations to things they see. When the learner sees this new idea, he/she will make connections or in some cases corrections to previous knowledge.

Interaction is a very important aspect of engaging the learner. This can be seen with the bicycle riding skeleton and the follow-up analysis of the amount of information retained and the Cell Lab. Although the interactive exhibits attracted more visitors, I found it surprising that the viewers of the interactive Glowing Worms exhibit had the same experience as the ones who viewed the moderately interactive and non-interactive versions of the exhibit.

It is impressive to see how well the Cell Lab experience fits into the Learning Strands framework that we spoke about for the past few classes. It included engagement and excitement, learning new knowledge, observing different phenomena and questioning it, using tools such as microscopes and of course wearing lab coats and goggles that adds a greater feel of involvement by the learner. The author mentions the ideal of having more open-ended experiments that challenge that experimenter but do not frustrate him. Relating back to the TEDtalk video we watched in class two weeks back about researchers hitting a cloud, the previous ideal seems like a paradox. If the experiment is open-ended, it will frustrate youngsters that do not understand the concept of the “cloud” since they would not know what to look for. Also, ensuring that the exhibit stays within an allotted time of 15 minutes would leave the learners frustrated since nothing would have been accomplished during those 15 minutes if the experiment were open-ended.