Chapter four mentions different ypes of talking associated within a frog exhibit and the subcatergories of both types. The two that stood out to me the most were perpetual talk is the “process of identifying and sharing what is significant in a complex environment” (69) and the subcategories involved are called identification, naming, pointing out a feature, and quoting from a label. These subcategories reminded me somewhat of the six strands of learning because the categories go from less complex and scientific to increasingly so. Identification is simply pointing out what is being observed, naming is finding out what the object that is being observed is, while the last two involve actual scientific methods such as finding a unique characteristic of the object being observed and reading from the exhibition label to find out more. It was noted that this type of converstaion occurs in about 70 percent and is the most common.
The second type of conversation is conceptual talk and is actually viewed as more scientific and more desirable for scientists to see others achieving than perpetual talking. This category covers “Simple inferences…and complex inferences” (70). Even the simple inferences will provoke more meaningful conversation and will encourage discussion and eventually learning. Because asking questions and brainstorming is so important to the scientific community, it is stressed that this type of learning is what should be aimed for but is not as often achieved as science learners would like. This type of talking occurs in only 56 percent of museums. I think that in order to achieve more of this type of talking, museums should incorporate some interesting “book club” so to speak and encourage participants to brainstorm what they see in small groups.