Blog archive:
September 2010

My second lot of quick notes from Stephen's parallel session at the Museums Australia 2010 conference. Note these have been cut and pasted from Twitter so are very brief.

My quick notes from Stephen talk at the Museums Australia 2010 conference

Arggghhhh! Nothing gets my goat more than reading a novel or a report that shows a scientific name with both the genus and species names with upper case letters or neither word in italics.

Natural history specimens as social media stars? How (and why) did the Australian Museum get into the social media space and what are we doing there?

Kids Teaching Kids is an amazing program that places environmental solutions to kids, "our future." One of the founders of this program argued that famous phrase we have all heard when we were young "you are the future" with the question "why can't I be the futur

Families have a lot to consider before making the final decision to go to a museum. How do they make this decision? Why do they make this decision? The current strategy to appeal to an audience is by creating a two-way conversation between museum and visitor; however, this may not necessarily be

Although my final day approached, the remaining Museum staff would continue Science in the City for another two days, this time at the Australian Museum. This event left me quite inspired and worked with the best of people. And the buzz from the first day continued!

With great excitement, Science in the City began! New to it all, I was caught in a whirlwind of energy and lots and lots of High school kids. Find out what buzz was stirred during the first day of Science in the City (16 August).

Science in the City (which also expands to Science in the Suburbs and Science in the Bush) is a week long event aimed at High school students of all grade levels. It is designed to encourage them towards an interest in the sciences and to expose them to the diverse field

A walk around the Field of Mars Environment Education Centre with Steve Papp and Pat Spiers last week revealed a plethora of native flowers of many colours and shapes, including pea flowers - all perfect for a field study of pollinators.

The Slingjaw Wrasse is aptly named. The video shows excellent slow-motion footage of the greatly protrusible mouth during feeding. Click on the link to the fact sheet for more information on this species.

Fish scientists find on average about one species per week previously unknown from Australian waters, yet there is still so much we don’t know, says Museum ichthyologist Dr Jeff Leis.

Over the years quite a few people have asked me about the Candiru. Is it really true that this fish can end up inside the bladder of an unfortunate person who urinates in the wrong stream?

As part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity180 students from 11 high schools gave oral presentations about their biodiversity learning projects in the theatre at the Australian Museum.

Well, probably yes which is why I've been asked to run a mini-workshop on this stuff at the Museum Shops Association 2010 Conference on 9 September. If I was a museum shop manager what would I need to know about social media and Web 2.0? Find some answers and other resources on this page