Virtual innovation spurs physical innovation

At the Classrooms in the Wild event, I renewed my acquaintance with Robert Stephenson. Rob was a loyal supporter of eLearning Forum. Recently, he joined The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.

The Tech is a fantastic place: guaranteed to blow the socks off children from three to a hundred and three. Of course, you can’t stand still if you have a word like innovation built into your name.

Background

The future well-being of the United States depends upon continuing innovation in the development and use of advanced technologies. Essential to this progress is linkage between math and science in the classroom and applications of technology in industry and everyday life. There is also a growing need for increased public awareness of the nature and significance of those technologies that are affecting life today and shaping the future.

With its worldwide reputation for technical innovation and economic growth, Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area offer an opportunity to create an educational model linking industry, the schools and the community to:

• Inspire students with exhibit and lab experiences with applications of technology from industry and everyday life.
• Empower teachers with training and access to applications of current technologies that reinforce and complement concepts taught in the classroom.
• Enable local families, individuals, and visitors from around the world to discover new insights into technology and the process of innovation through exploratory activities.

A year ago, Frank P. Quattrone was appointed chairman of The Tech. If his name is familiar, it’s because Quattrone was the Morgan Stanley exec the SEC repeatedly tried to pillory over an innocuous email the Feds claimed was a smoking gun. He is a technology heavyweight, having been instrumental in the IPOs of Amazon.com, Cisco, Intuit, Handspring, Netscape, Synopsys, SynOptics, TiVo and Xilinx. He wants to speed the development of new exhibits.

Rob has landed a mind-blowing position leading the development of new exhibits in Second Life. Visit The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop. Anyone can sign up to build a virtual exhibit. The best of the lot become real exhibits at The Tech. Everything is covered by a Creative Commons license and may be shared with others so long as the source is attributed.

On June 4th, The Tech is hosting the Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design. Following a keynote by Phillip Rosedale (founder of Second Life), a panel will discuss:

How can external experts and amateurs play a role in exhibit design?

How useful are virtual worlds for museums?

How to build and manage an online community.

How to foster inter-museum collaboration.

If this is your thing, there’s room available at the table.