This post by Nina Simon raises some great, eternal questions about visitor engagement.  Free-choice learning, by definition, entails agency on the part of the learner.  What’s the best way to allow and inspire visitors to provide input and exercise that agency?  Simon states the problem well:

“The fundamental question here is how we balance different modes of audience engagement. You could argue that visitors are more “engaged” by an activity that invites inquiry-based participation than one that invites them to read a label, even if they never get answers to their questions. Or, you could argue that this kind of active engagement should be secondary to sharing information, which can be more efficiently communicated by a label.”

In other news, the Magic Planet has finished its first round of upgrades.  We’ll be doing more work with it next week.