With a little training, can computer history museum employees more familiar with a mainframe from the 1960s than the latest app become active storytellers and promoters on social media? Would they feel empowered to adapt unfamiliar tools and could they expand the Museum’s reach to new audiences? Those were the questions that motivated CHM to apply for a “Museums Empowered” grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in 2019.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services Grant ME-245650-OMS-2 was awarded in fall 2020 and ended in February 2022, greenlighting CHM’s project. We learned a lot, and we hope our experience might help other institutions understand the challenges and rewards of developing an in-house social media initiative. Please note that the views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this post do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Background

Over three billion users access social media platforms, and CHM realized that they are a necessary channel if the Museum is to meet its vision to vastly increase its global reach. And, CHM’s computer-oriented audience, its one-of-a-kind artifacts, and its diverse slate of public events lend themselves perfectly to targeted, real-time social media to engage visitors on a global scale. However, in 2019, CHM lagged behind more successful peers in terms of social media engagement, with 4,470 followers on Instagram, 4,986 on LinkedIn, 35,136 on Twitter, and 115,790 on Facebook.

The reason for this was simple: CHM had not devoted the necessary staff and resources to social media. Growing an institution’s social media presence relies on the participation of its employees, and there was no culture of social media usage at CHM. The very small marketing department had made significant progress over the years, but they could not alone grow a robust social media following.

CHM employee survey taken before social media advocacy and training project.

In a CHM employee survey taken in October 2019, 68 percent of the CHM staff said they were actively engaged with social media. Of those, 54 percent posted or browsed only once a week or less, and only 12 percent contributed content or started a conversation on social media. While there are no readily available comparison studies of employees at other museums, CHM staff fell below national averages for general social media usage.

The Goal

The goal of the project was to create a roadmap for CHM’s social media activities and build a robust team of in-house social media “experts” at the Museum capable of engaging new, broader audiences with CHM’s content and resources.

The Plan

The first step in the journey involved engaging Edelman, a PR and marketing consultancy firm, to develop a comprehensive social media strategy for the Museum. Edelman then trained a cross-department team of twelve staff members in the use of the specific social media tools they deemed most appropriate for our materials and target audiences: Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They emphasized the critical role of employee advocacy on social media for an organization.

In addition, the CHM team took self-paced social media and content marketing courses through ClickMinded. The Marketing Department added a part-time employee dedicated to supporting the social media strategy and training. CHM’s contracted designer developed an image library and conducted workshops to help employees understand the Museum’s brand and how it can be applied to social media posts to ensure a consistent look and feel.

Results of a training evaluation survey question demonstrating its effectiveness in advancing employee knowledge about social media.

The Results

Like every organization, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted CHM. Employees moved to work from home and priorities shifted as the Museum pivoted to all-virtual programming. Despite the disruption and challenges, employees were able to spend time putting into practice the new social media strategy.

An example of tweet in a series of social media posts for Black History Month.

Over the course of the grant period CHM gained 2,000 additional followers, although we are currently moving to place more emphasis on engagement rather than followers. In the year before the grant began, employees posted 462 times; during the grant period, over 1,000 posts were made.

The employee survey at the end of the grant period in February 2022 demonstrated an increase in engagement with social media from the 2019 survey. Seventy-seven percent of employees now said they were actively engaged (up from 68 percent). Fifty-three percent of employees used social media on behalf of CHM once a week or more. Of all museum employees, 75 percent had engaged with CHM posts during the grant period.

Results of a survey question demonstrating that employees feel social media is an important strategy to reach new audiences.

Further, over 93 percent of employees believe that social media should be either an important or very important part of a strategy to reach new audiences. One employee noted that, “Forwarding and retweeting CHM posts is my default position.” Another said, “I didn’t used to pay much attention to CHM social media, but now I try to check CHM’s posts on LinkedIn to like/share when appropriate.”

What We Learned

The following lessons learned will hopefully help other museums and institutions as they consider their own social media strategies.

Price Increases

If pursuing a similar project through an IMLS grant, plan for price increases for the online training courses, especially given the year-long period between application and award. CHM was surprised at how much prices increased (5%—8%); fortunately, in part because of its non-profit status, the Museum was able to negotiate lower rates with the course providers. We highly recommend the Social Media Marketing Course from ClickMinded.

Roles and Responsibilities

A source of confusion about the project developed about what kinds of posting and sharing the social media team would be engaged in; some team members thought that they would be utilizing CHM’s official social media accounts to post directly to social media. However, due in part to both logistics and liability issues, only CHM’s Marketing team members have the authority to officially post on social media on behalf of CHM.

It should be made clear from the beginning that the role of the broader social media team is to contribute to the ideation and creation of social media campaigns and posts, share Museum content with their own networks, and, when appropriate, create their own posts and content related to Museum events, artifacts, etc. that they can post in their networks. In addition, we learned that simply “liking” CHM posts had a useful multiplier effect. At the very least, museum employees can be advocates in this way.

In addition, while privacy and security concerns were not particularly high, it is important to note that there was some hesitation from a few employees about using their personal accounts and networks to engage with CHM on social media channels. 

Time

Over the course of the grant period, it became clear that because team members were not in the habit of using work time for social media activities, their engagement was sometimes spotty and inconsistent. Generally, it became an activity that was pursued primarily when people felt they had some free time.

Results of a survey question demonstrating how lack of time contributes to employees not engaging with social media.

Managers need to ensure that time for social media activities is incorporated into employees’ daily activities and responsibilities. Without explicit “permission,” established goals, and leadership buy-in, these activities may often be sidelined in favor of other priorities and deadlines.

Tools

Given the speed of effective social media, employees who post must be empowered and have the appropriate tools to manipulate images, access permissions, and easily create video clips or other engaging material for posts. CHM’s internal review process sometimes slowed down posts, and image manipulation, which occasionally required the help of our off-site graphic designer, also made it difficult to post quickly at times.

A media library, image templates and guidelines, and other tools can go a long way toward facilitating how quickly employees can create posts and engage in a timely fashion. A streamlined review process is also necessary if oversight is needed. An onerous process—too many people who need to review, slow feedback, etc.—can also slow down the pace of posts and reduce employee motivation and momentum.

An example of how templates and guidelines convey the CHM brand and unify posts within a channel, in this case a series on “tech gifts of Christmas past” on Instagram.

Partway through the project, CHM began development of a robust Digital Asset Management System. It will allow employees to access and share artifacts and images in our collections and marketing archives, manipulate them, and share with each other, all without affecting the original. This system will empower employees to more quickly and easily create compelling, timely, posts and share assets with their colleagues.

Resources

We discovered hidden talents for photography, writing engaging posts, coming up with interesting campaign ideas, and other skills among CHM employees.

An example of a social media series on “beautiful tech.”

Employees’ skillsets can be a great asset, but they are not a substitute for a dedicated staff focused on marketing and community engagement. If there are resources available, it is important to hire specialists who can guide employee efforts, either as consultants or in-house.

Next Steps

The grant support for this project was extremely valuable in helping CHM to understand our institutional strengths and weaknesses in content marketing and social media engagement. We now have a strategy for moving forward. Our culture has shifted, and employees appreciate the power of social media and feel more comfortable getting involved. Next steps involve ensuring that CHM leadership also fully understands the value of employees actively engaging in social media efforts and encourages them to do so. Tasks associated with social media must be incorporated into job descriptions and performance review processes.

We look forward to a future in which all Museums enjoy the power of social media and other technologies to bring their stories to broader audiences and to engage everyone in conversations about what it means to be human in our digital age.

Need some help? Download our training resource. You may also be interested in learning about another IMLS-supported prototype project that explored using artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to help make CHM’s collections more accessible.

Support CHM’s Mission

Blogs like these would not be possible without the generous support of people like you who care deeply about decoding technology. Please consider making a donation.

Image caption: From a tweet for the 60th birthday of video game Spacewar! Photo by Mark Richards.

The post Posting, Tweeting, and Sharing History appeared first on CHM.

CHM now has a virtual presence in Minecraft: Education Edition. The Great Tech Story is a new “world” in the popular game platform that’s designed to help teachers prepare students to become knowledgeable and ethical users and builders of technology. In partnership with veteran world builders ReWrite Media, CHM curators and museum educators mined the collection for fun objects and diverse and interesting people to populate the game world.

It’s fair to say that neither the CHM team nor the game development team fully understood what it would take to make this brave new world.

Laying the Foundation

Although some of us have experience creating curriculum and interactive activities for students at the Museum, no one on the CHM team had ever developed a game before.

As we let our imaginations roam—often wildly and unproductively—the ReWrite team’s patience, positive attitude, and can-do spirit never wavered. Even when we asked for the seemingly impossible, they came up with ingenious solutions, creatively working to realize our vision in Minecraft’s blocky, pixelated environment.

The CHM lobby in the Minecraft game.

Slow, clumsy users ourselves, we were awed by the speed with which our partners zipped around the world, often building new features in real-time during meetings. Working with new people who shared our vision of CHM as a great place for learning and fun was Senior Curator Dag Spicer’s favorite part of the project.

Though we all love technology, I was struck by the different work cultures of a museum and a game development company. They move fast and try things out to see if they work. We move more slowly, trying to imagine the future implications of decisions before we make them. But we discovered we’re equally obsessed with detail.

An example of the developers’ notes on some changes made to the game.

Kate McGregor, director of education at CHM and the team lead for the game, noticed that there were posters of skulls on the walls of the virtual Museum. When she asked about it, the developers laughed. It’s a poster they put in all their Minecraft worlds and without thinking they’d added it to CHM. They replaced it with more appropriate artwork, like the ones below.

Art on the walls in the exhibit showing AR/VR goggles and an early website for the White House.

As a content developer and writer, the 256-character limit for panels in the game was particularly challenging for me. We had to work hard to distill big ideas and lots of information into text that would engage student players. It was an interesting exercise, particularly for the curators on the team, who could (and have) written whole articles and books about what we were trying to share.

Building the Exhibit

ReWrite designer Ryan Meuer worked on recreating the physical building using reference photos. For him, designing the game layout in a way that both resembled the layout of the real CHM exhibit, Revolution: 2000 Years of Computing—notorious for its complexity—and making it easy to navigate was a challenge. It’s unique in Minecraft to have something detailed and true-to-life that’s so close to scale, he said, and he enjoyed learning about and seeing each artifact come to life.

A section of the exhibit in the game showing a magnetic disk storage device and an Incan quipu, an ancient device for storing data with knots and thread.

The CHM team had to determine which artifacts from the thousands on display and in our collection to use that would help us share lessons and be fun for students to learn about. Oh, and that could also be recreated in Minecraft.

Those artifacts include the 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism—the oldest known scientific calculator—the Apollo lunar lander, handheld precursors of the smartphone, and a self-driving car. CHM’s Kate McGregor was excited to see her favorite artifact, Shakey the Robot, brought to life in digital form to reach a larger audience.

Shakey the robot in the Minecraft CHM exhibit.

Kip Spangler, a ReWrite artist and designer, was intrigued about how things like the IBM 1401 changed and innovated computation and showed him how far computers have come today. The Cray-1 Supercomputer, which featured a central column surrounded by a padded, circular seat, was a hit with the game developers. ReWrite Mechanic Christopher Childress’ said, “It’s a shame computers don’t come with their own upholstery anymore.” For ReWrite Project Manager Allison Bondoc, the Cray-1 is the number one artifact she wants to visit in the real Museum.

The Cray-1 computer in the Minecraft CHM exhibit.

Populating the Museum

As students navigate the exhibit, they meet “non-player characters (NPCs)” who share information about the artifacts and concepts they’re encountering. NPCs include historic figures and still-living computing pioneers as well as a diverse group of tech users and innovators. With accessibility a deep concern for both teams, CHM consulted with disability experts and the developers created a Minecraft NPC using a power wheelchair with voice command tech.

This NPC, a high school student named Antonio, appears in an immersive learning experience where a family demonstrates how they use technology in daily life.

“The sheer number of interactable NPCs with unique dialogue is certainly higher than any previous projects I’ve worked on,” noted Christopher Childress.

The CHM team chose familiar NPCs like Alan Turing and Admiral Grace Hopper as well as lesser-known figures like Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, who played a key role in the early internet, and Claude Shannon, who appears in a tuxedo to convey period clothing from the 19th century.

Claude Shannon stands beside a demo about relays in the Hardware Garage.

“Since the visual palette is so simple (8-bit blocky appearance),” said CHM’s Dag Spicer, “I enjoyed the back and forth between curators and developers with how to distill an historical character’s essence for the game within these limitations.” His favorite character is Margaret Hamilton, who created software for the Apollo mission that landed men on the moon.

NPC Margaret Hamilton stands beneath the Apollo lunar lander.

For Kip Spangler, Ada Lovelace was the favorite. “Before getting to work on the CHM Minecraft World, I hadn’t gotten the pleasure of learning about her,” he said.

Designing Immersive Experiences

Students meet additional NPCs and learn more in-depth concepts when they’re teleported from the exhibit to five immersive learning experiences. They’re introduced to the basics of computing technologies, programming concepts, the entrepreneur’s journey, ethics in tech, and the impact of tech on daily life.

An early diagram for the activities in the Hardware Garage immersive experience.

The game developers were instrumental in repurposing Minecraft’s medieval-esque tools and features into activities that teach technological concepts. For example, to learn how punched cards can tell computers what to do, students use a pickaxe to smash squares in a giant card. When they succeed in “punching” the hole, a related “furnace” lights up.

Punched card activity in the immersive Software Lab experience.

I’m terrible at wielding the pickaxe, but the game developers assured me it’s a basic skill for anyone who plays Minecraft and the students will have no trouble using it, or any of the other tools they’ll need to tackle the game’s culminating “build challenge.”

Though humbling, I’m reminded that we all have something to teach each other: curators and educators, game developers and coders, and, most importantly, who we’re doing it all for—the kids who’ll become the next generation of technology innovators.

Learn more about the game.

The post Making The Great Tech Story appeared first on CHM.

Technology has the power to transform our world… for better or worse. Can we help students learn how to create a future where technology serves humanity? We think so!

“The Great Tech Story,” is CHM’s new experience on the Minecraft: Education Edition game platform used by educators in classrooms around the world to deliver educational content to students in a fun and engaging way.

The Great Tech Story includes a virtual exhibit to explore, immersive learning areas, and a problem-solving challenge. It empowers students ages 8–18 to become informed technology citizens and inspires them to use technology to solve real-world problems.

In collaboration with Microsoft and veteran world builders ReWrite Media, CHM curators and museum educators mined (pun intended!) the collection for fun and instructive artifacts, diverse and interesting people, and provocative ideas. If you’ve been to the museum in person, you’ll recognize many of the artifacts in their virtual form.

Early game consoles in the exhibit.

Exploring the Past

How did computing in the past evolve into what we experience today? Who were the great pioneers and what were the innovations that shaped our digital age?

To explore these questions, students navigate through a virtual CHM museum exhibit on the history of computing. They will engage with artifacts like the 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism—the oldest known scientific calculator—the Apollo lunar lander, iconic computers like the PDP-1 and the Cray-1, handheld precursors of the smartphone, and a self-driving car. They’ll meet historic figures, like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing, and living computing pioneers, such as Margaret Hamilton, who wrote code to land men on the moon, and Lynn Conway, who broke barriers and developed new methods of integrated circuit design. They’ll also be introduced to a diverse group of tech users and innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Check out the full list of non-player characters in the game who are based on real people.

From inside the exhibit, students can be teleported to five immersive experiences:

• The Hardware Garage, to learn about fundamental computing concepts like relays and switches.
• The Software Lab, to engage with programming concepts like computing languages and compilers.
• The Startup Workspace, to meet a team of entrepreneurs developing a new technology.
• The Ethics Forum, to meet a diverse group of non-player characters who debate values and issues to consider when designing and using technology.
• The Impact House, to meet a family with diverse abilities using different kinds of technology in daily life.

The Startup Workspace, with computer workstations, a startup team, and a lava lamp!

Building the Future

When they’ve completed the immersive experiences, students collaborate on applying what they’ve learned to tackle a real-world problem by designing a solution as part of a Minecraft build challenge. They’ll consider how they can use technology to make a difference and help their communities or the world. We’ll be adding new challenges throughout the year, starting with: Save Your Energy! Building Sustainable Technology.

The Great Tech Story is one element of a multi-dimensional partnership with Microsoft that is advancing CHM’s transformation into a leading 21st century museum. It’s an exciting part of the expansion of CHM’s education programs into digital experiences that engage and empower a global community of technology citizens.

Join us in our virtual world and start playing now!

The post The Great Tech Story appeared first on CHM.

In June 2019, four college students from universities on opposite coasts and studying fields as diverse as global studies and computer science arrived at CHM. They had worked in a museum, a startup, a security and privacy lab, and a rowing club. They knew languages ranging from French to Spanish to Korean to Python. They all shared a passion for entrepreneurship and innovation. 

Left to right: Felipe Silveira, a global studies major at UC Santa Barbara; Nicole Gates, a computer science major at Wellesley College; Allison Ransom, a global liberal studies major at New York University; Sungmin Park, a recent cognitive science graduate from UC Davis.

Here are some highlights of their work this year.

One Word “Takes Over” at Teen Community Event

On their first day, the interns hit the ground running, working to prepare an activity for CHM’s Teen Takeover, an annual after-hours event where teens explore how technology helps define the past, present, and future of society. Exponential would add an entrepreneurial spin by developing activities for teens that distilled lessons from its One Word initiative. The goal: to empower teens to see themselves as future entrepreneurs.

In addition to creating two “mythbusters” posters, interns created three activities to spark teens’ interest in entrepreneurship: a “wordle” or word cloud that updated in real time; a timed business pitch challenge; and a “One Word” word scramble game. The activities were designed to be fun and interactive, garnering roughly 300 instances of engagement, to make entrepreneurial topics accessible to the event’s nearly 500 attendees.  

The experience was a rewarding one for participants and for the interns, whose roles as facilitators required a quick transformation from CHM novices into entrepreneurial experts. Planning and facilitating these activities, all during their first week, fostered confidence and a strong team dynamic that would carry through their projects for the rest of the summer. Most importantly, the event became one of their favorite summer memories.

The intern team facilitates three One -Word–based activities.

Two “mythbusters” posters created by our interns, displayed at Teen Takeover. These posters convey common exclusionary myths about entrepreneurship—“entrepreneurs are loner-geniuses and extroverts” and “entrepreneurs can only fall under certain demographics”—alongside words of advice from individuals whose success has defied those myths.

Sungmin explains the One Word “wordle”: participants enter their One Word of advice to entrepreneurs on an iPad. The computer monitor updates in real time to display the words they entered. Words repeated by multiple participants appeared larger on the screen.

Left: A business pitch challenge in which participants select a fantastical invention and come up with a pitch to convince the “venture capitalists” (our intern team) to invest in the product. Right: A word game in which participants are given scrambled Scrabble tiles and must rearrange them to decipher a word of advice.

After Teen Takeover, our interns focused on researching, becoming experts on company founders and builders in Silicon Valley and beyond. Their findings helped set the stage for a broad array of Exponential offerings, from oral histories to events to exhibits.

Hitting the Books (but not the artifacts!)

Felipe and Sungmin set to work researching future subjects of oral histories to help prepare the interviewer, Exponential Center’s executive director, Marguerite Gong Hancock. But this process would involve much more than writing interview questions.

Felipe chose to prepare background materials on Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur and educator who has changed the way many think about and operate startups. Felipe drew on a variety of sources, from past interviews to Steve’s own blog. He also had the unique opportunity to study artifacts from Steve’s past, including newspaper articles, magazine ads, and business documents. The artifacts added a tangible element to an otherwise digital research project, helping bring Steve Blank’s history to life for Felipe. 

The first page of Felipe’s research guide on Steve Blank, which features 16 subsections. Each covers a significant chapter of Steve’s life, including detailed written accounts and potential interview questions arising from those accounts.

Using these sources, Felipe traced and articulated the arc of Steve’s illustrious career in a 79-page written account. This in turn helped him to develop thought-provoking questions for Steve’s oral history. On the day of the interview, Felipe had the opportunity to meet the individual he had learned so much about. He described the experience as “surreal.”

Meanwhile, Sungmin studied the founders of Intuit: Scott Cook, Tom Proulx, and Eric Dunn. Researching three individuals at the same time was a unique challenge, but it allowed Sungmin to integrate all their perspectives on the founding and building of Intuit.

Sungmin ultimately produced 80 pages worth of research guides and accompanying questions (Nicole assisted in researching Eric Dunn). Though he could not meet the founders before their interviews, he did see them in person at the CHM Live event The Intuit Story, a rare conversation between Scott, Tom and Eric that also drew on Sungmin’s research. Afterward, Sungmin collaborated with Felipe to write a blog article featuring highlights from the panel discussion, now featured on CHM’s new website. Read “Making Change: 36 Years of Innovation at Intuit.” 

Double “Park”ing: Two Ways to Explore Stanford Research Park

Like Felipe and Sungmin, Allison and Nicole were lucky enough to see their research subject in person. But theirs was a little harder to shake hands with. Nicole and Allison spent much of their summer investigating Stanford Research Park (SRP), which has been home to foundational Silicon Valley companies like Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor as well as more recent world-changers like Facebook and Tesla.

On a blazing July day, Allison and Nicole brought their fellow interns on a field trip to several notable addresses on the campus. Though they had read about its ever-evolving nature, they were surprised to find the landscape of companies fundamentally different than it had been even months before, as represented in the 2019 SRP directory.

Together, Allison and Nicole compiled a rolodex of significant figures in SRP’s history; a “core dig” listing the occupant of each SRP address in 1970, 2014, and 2019, respectively; in-depth research into Varian, SRP’s first tenant; a summary on all their findings; and a bibliography of informational sources on the figures and companies of SRP. Allison and Nicole’s work served as early research and development for a project that will depend on their contributions to take shape. 

An excerpt from the Core Dig, showing SRP’s growth and change over time.

Oral Histories: Four Ways

What is research without (content) development? Drawing on their ever-increasing knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley, interns helped develop a variety of new educational materials and media formats using CHM’s oral history collection.

CHM has roughly 1,000 oral history interviews in its collection. With most interviews consisting of one to three hours of video footage and 20-50 pages of typed transcripts, that’s a lot of material! Our interns created four different digital content prototypes that draw key insights from CHM’s oral histories and aim to make them more accessible through shorter, dynamic formats.

1. Kinetic Typography 

Nicole chose to try kinetic typography, an animation technique that mixes motion and text to express ideas using video animation. As content for her kinetic typography video, Nicole took a short excerpt from Ann Winblad’s oral history interview, a story about Ann’s first entrepreneurial endeavor at age 8: selling Barbie clothes to the neighborhood kids for $1 apiece. The result was a video in which text and images play in time with Ann Winblad’s narration. This type of content is accessible to any age group, but may be especially appealing to a younger audience that is accustomed to consuming much of its content through image-rich videos. 

Nicole believes kinetic typography helped to tell Ann’s story in a unique way. But since the process required a several-day time investment, she warns that it could be difficult to repeat on a large scale. 

Cover image from Nicole’s kinetic typography video. Nicole animated every word of an excerpt from Ann Winblad’s oral history, changing the size or positioning of some words and replacing others with images (for example, an image of a house in place of the word “house”) to emphasize key ideas.

Watch Nicole’s kinetic typography video.

2. Video Essay

Rather than replicating oral history transcripts word-for-word, Sungmin hoped to articulate the themes he had identified while researching the Intuit founders. This drew him to the video essay format. With origins in academia, video essays have become popular for both educational and entertainment purposes.

Screenshots from Sungmin’s prototype video essay on the Intuit story. Sungmin’s video essay synthesizes his background research into a condensed visual telling of the Intuit story and the importance of disruption to the survival of a company over time. He drew on images from CHM’s digital archive.

Sungmin hopes that widely accessible content like his video essay can pique viewers’ interests and lead them to check out the full oral history and even related content, such as event footage.

3. Infographic

To complement her counterparts’ video content, Allison worked on a text and image format designed to be consumable almost anytime, anywhere, by anyone: an infographic. Allison’s infographic draws on highlights from YouTube cofounder Steve Chen’s oral history. The information is enhanced by photos, graphics, and a video of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, which is an example of how infographics can serve as an entry point to other CHM content.

Allison’s infographic on Steve Chen, which presents information in several different formats: short paragraphs on Steve’s early life and the origins of YouTube, a list of Exponential’s signature “five numbers” about Steve, direct quotes from the oral history that point to YouTube’s three guiding themes, and a “Did you know?” piece of trivia.

Allison points out that the template she created for Steve Chen can be used for any other interviewee in our collection, making the project scalable and visually consistent. Allison believes infographics can easily be embedded into the CHM website and are easier to view than videos in the absence of high-speed internet.

4. Glideshow/Photo Journal

Felipe explored a format that could provide an in-depth and visually compelling look at oral history content: a “glideshow,” or photo journal. Viewers “glide” through a slideshow of seamlessly integrated text boxes and photos. Felipe’s photo journal draws on his earlier research of Steve Blank and includes Steve’s early life, his first entrepreneurial endeavors, and his involvement with marketing and the personal computer. This glideshow condenses content from Steve’s 44-page transcript into roughly 6 pages of text, with the added richness of images.

Screenshots from Felipe’s glideshow about Steve Blank, which includes quotes from Steve’s oral history, Felipe’s summaries of key points, and corresponding photos; the section about Steve’s early work at ESL features his ID card from 1980, on which he sports the styles of the time.

These prototypes were presented at an all-staff showcase and opened everyone’s minds at CHM to new content possibilities and ways of thinking.

CHM FANS (Felipe Allison Nicole Sungmin)

Our interns have returned to their lives outside CHM with knowledge about the entrepreneur’s journey and ecosystem, experience in finding and synthesizing pertinent information, and the satisfaction of having made a positive contribution to projects and initiatives at CHM. We believe their part in CHM’s transformation will help shape opportunities for us to inspire and be inspired by young people, to enliven and diversify our portfolio of offerings, and to convene and reach new members of our community.    

I speak for the Exponential team when I say it was a pleasure to have such talented, hardworking and kind individuals as part of our team this summer. But it has been a unique honor for me, a former Exponential intern, to work so closely with this year’s class and to continue to play a part in the program.

If you’re interested in becoming an Exponential Center intern or have questions about the program, contact Exponential Center Education.

The post Exploration and Creation: Highlights from the 2019 Class of Exponential Center Interns appeared first on CHM.

Thanks to our long partnerships with both Broadcom Foundation and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this is our fourth year participating in the Broadcom MASTERS. We know from past years that CHM’s activities have been directly responsible for changing students’ academic and professional ambitions, and I fully expect this to happen again. I’m so proud of our team and so pleased about our impact!

— Lauren Silver, Vice President of Education, CHM

CHM is proud to report on its continued participation in the Broadcom MASTERS Competition and partnership with the Society for Science & the Public (SSP). Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) is a program founded and produced by SSP that seeks to inspire young scientists, engineers, and innovators who will solve the grand challenges of the future. The 8th annual competition took place in Washington, DC, on October 19−23, and two of CHM’s fearless educators were there to take part.

CHM’s Kate McGregor, manager of family and community programs, and Stephanie Corrigan, manager of school and teacher programs, created and led two original challenges: a Raspberry Pi Challenge and a Logic Gates Challenge. Each challenge introduced concepts of computer science, hardware, and software and encouraged the 30 middle school finalists to collaborate, problem-solve, and think critically.

• Learn more about the 2018 Broadcom MASTERS finalists.

 

Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

CHM Manager of Family and Community Programs Kate McGregor leads the Raspberry Pi Challenge at the 2018 Broadcom MASTERS. Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

 

 

Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

 

 

Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

CHM Manager of Family and Community Programs Kate McGregor leads the Raspberry Pi Challenge at the 2018 Broadcom MASTERS. Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

 

CHM Manager of School and Teacher Programs Stephanie Corrigan leads the Logic Gate Challenge at the 2018 Broadcom MASTERS.

 

In our Raspberry Pi Challenge, led by McGregor, six teams of five students were challenged to design, code, and build a computer program to control the gyroscope (a feature of the SenseHat—a peripheral attachment to the Raspberry Pi) connected to a Raspberry Pi computer. The goal was to align the roll, pitch, and yaw (x, y and z axes) to fall within a designated range to trigger code that either a) displayed an image on the LED matrix when the goal was accomplished, or b) displayed the letter X when the axes were not within the desired range.

In our Logic Gates Challenge, led by Corrigan, small teams worked together to familiarize themselves with the rules of Boolean algebra, completing a mini challenge where they arranged logic statements and created truth tables for each of the three main Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT. Students then learned how those operators create logic gates that control electricity and form basic computer architecture. Each group completed a main challenge where they designed systems that use combinations of the three main gates (AND, OR, and NOT) to match other truth tables.

The 30 finalists were selected by a panel of distinguished scientists and engineers from a record 2,537 applicants. The finalists competed in a week-long series of hands-on challenges and were judged on projects that they presented at their state or regional science fair, their knowledge of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects, and their demonstration of 21st-century skills, including critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration. The finalists also met with government officials and showcased their projects for the public during a free event at the National Geographic Society on October 20.

The Broadcom MASTERS Award Ceremony took place on October 23 at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Georgia Hutchinson, 14, of Woodside, California, took home the coveted $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize, the top award in the Broadcom MASTERS. Photo: Linda Doane/Society for Science & the Public

Winners were named during an awards ceremony on October 23 at the Carnegie Institution for Science. CHM congratulates Georgia Hutchinson, 14, of Woodside, California, who won the coveted $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize, the top award in the Broadcom MASTERS. The top award winners also included: Jack Albright, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Advancement, $20,000; Jacqueline Prawira, the Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation: $10,000; and John Madland, the Lemelson Award for Invention, $7,500. Our congratulations to all of the prize winners and finalists!

Broadcom MASTERS 2018 Highlights

Read more about CHM’s Raspberry Pi Challenge:

• “#SundayFunday with Raspberry Pi,” October 22, 2018

Learn more about CHM’s educational offerings:

• Broadcom Presents DesignCodeBuild: Programming for Students in Grades 6−8
• K–12 School and Youth Groups: Self-Guided Visits, Docent-Led Tours, and Workshops
• Field Trip Days for Title 1 Middle Schools
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation Curricula and Programming

The post CHM Challenges Broadcom MASTERS Finalists with Raspberry Pi & Logic Gates appeared first on CHM.

Teen Engagement Council and 2018 Interns & Volunteers

After months of planning, organizing, and sending many, many emails, the Teen Engagement Council hosted “Power Up the Future” on June 22, 2018, bringing approximately 500 people to the Museum for the first of an annual event series dedicated to promoting teens’ interest in technology.

It takes a village! From graphic design and marketing to programming preparation and event coordination, we learned what it takes to put together an event from start to finish.

The Teen Engagement Council comprises 10 former high school interns, all teens who wanted to continue working with the Museum to share their love of technology. We started meeting together in January, under the guidance of Emily Stupfel, education specialist of family and community programs, and Kate McGregor, manager of family and community programs, to prepare an event that would bring local teens into the Museum for an entertaining, educational extravaganza. From the myriad of departments in the Museum, we learned about fundraising, event planning, marketing, and even the legal hoops to jump through in order to host food trucks. Who knew?

As the crucial day approached we found ourselves making increasingly more critical decisions, with emails and texts constantly bouncing between us. Despite the weight that we knew was on our shoulders, we became even more excited about the event as time marched on.

And then it was upon us! We spent that Friday afternoon preparing to moderate the panel (Shreya), stuffing thank-you bags (Avani), labeling raffle prizes (Annemarie), editing the agenda (Sirisha), feeding volunteers (Anish), watering volunteers (Shiven), teaching demo instructors (Fariha), arranging signage (Roland), and running around averting potential disasters (Rikesh).

Incredible live, interactive demos from Carbon (3D Printing), Smart Piano (music & tech), Audax Labs (AR/VR), San Jose State University Department of Digital Media Art (art & tech), LightUp (AR), Stanford Virtual Heart & Lighthaus (VR & health-tech), WeLens (VR), and QuiverVision (AR). The Museum’s IBM 1401 and PDP-1 Demo Labs were also in full effect.

We were confident that by 5 p.m. we would be ready to open the doors to hordes of teens. We certainly didn’t anticipate families arriving at 4:30 p.m., but we pulled together quickly and were able to accommodate them, thanks to our intense preparation earlier that day. Our check-in tables were outside the door, valiantly staffed by four tireless volunteers. Our raffle table, replete with prizes, had two volunteers to explain the structure of the drawing. Zade Lobo, former summer intern, was our enthusiastic, energetic emcee, notifying guests of event opportunities and overseeing our three rounds of Museum-themed Kahoot (a web-based trivia game that can be played on your personal mobile device). Demo tables upstairs invited visitors to try out nifty new technology from the art, health, and VR sectors of the industry. Of course, it would be remiss to forget our excellent Museum exhibits, which many guests explored.

Throughout the event, visitors also strolled outside for music and meals. A cappella groups—Alphabeats from Google, InTune from Linkedin, and Airbnbeats from Airbnb entertained visitors with their renditions of popular songs. Nearby, BBQ was cooked by Catered Too!, the appetizing aroma wafting around the patio. On the food truck scene, Mr. Softee offered delicious ice cream, Waffle Amore provided delectable waffles, and Tea Up served boba tea, a staple of many Bay Area teens’ diets.

A cappella performances by Alphabeat (Google), InTune (LinkedIn), and Airbnbeats (Airbnb) entertained visitors on the Museum patio. If you didn’t know this was a thing in Silicon Valley, check out this article from October 2017 to learn more!

At 7 p.m., guests flocked to Hahn Auditorium to attend a panel discussion, moderated by the Teen Engagement Council’s very own Shreya Nagpal, in discussion with Dr. David Axelrod, assistant professor of pediatric cardiology at the Stanford School of Medicine and cocreator of the Stanford Virtual Heart (one of our demos!), and Ge Wang, Stanford assistant professor of music and computer science and creator of the Ocarina app.

Guided by Shreya’s excellent questions, the panelists commented on their work, the importance of diversity in the tech industry, the relationship between humanities and STEM, and college prospects, a particularly scary subject for many teen attendees. One attendee excitedly told us that the panel inspired her to seriously consider a career in tech even though she was never really interested, as the connection made between art and STEM during the panel illustrated the broad range of careers in technology.

Watch Shreya in Conversation with David Axelrod and Ge Wang

Finally, at 8:15 p.m., we announced the raffle winners in a long-awaited ceremony. Zade tirelessly announced each ticket number as guests scrambled to check their corresponding tickets for the same number, a difficult task for those who had accumulated many. Winners were delighted to receive Museum memorabilia, a family membership, magnetic Nanodots, and a Makey-Makey.

As we shepherded guests out of the demos and the exhibits at 9 p.m., we congratulated each other on our success. Throughout all our months of preparation, we really didn’t know how many people to expect, and we were thrilled with the outcome—validation!

Without a doubt, none of this would have been possible without the tremendous support we received from Museum staff, the community, donors, vendors, and our supervisors. It was an incredible opportunity for us to learn management, organization, fundraising, event planning, marketing, collaboration, and so many more skills that we will now be able to bring to college and our future jobs. We hope that the #CHMTeenTakeover series will continue in the future so that the Museum can provide local teens with an unforgettable experience.

Thank You to Our Teen Engagement Council!

CHM is tremendously proud of its Teen Engagement Council for putting on the Museum’s first-ever teen takeover. We enjoyed working with and learning—yes, learning—from each of you. Your enthusiasm, hard work, imagination, and overall flare brought to light for new audiences the magic of computing and technology. You helped teens, just like you, see themselves in this story, a story that is still being created, reinvented, and shaped every day. Thank you for extending the Museum’s community and everything you’ve taught us!

The post #CHMTeenTakeover Recap appeared first on CHM.

This Cisco Weekend drew a record-breaking 2,311 Cisco visitors and guests in addition to the Museum’s regular weekend visitors. Events like this are not only a wonderful way for our staff to connect with the Silicon Valley community around us, but also an opportunity for the Museum to share its wonderful family and community programming with a larger audience through our Teen Internship Program.

Center for Cisco Heritage booth during Cisco Weekend at the Computer History Museum, February 24 and 25, 2018.

Many visitors’ first stop was the Cisco Heritage booth. The Center for Cisco Heritage is an ongoing four-year collaboration between the Museum and Cisco Systems. Paula Jabloner, director for the Center for Cisco Heritage and CHM’s director of digital collections, encouraged visitors to learn about Cisco’s long history in Silicon Valley through a number of artifacts, including the famous Border Gateway Protocolnapkin, often referred to as the “two-napkin protocol” created by Kirk Lougheed (Cisco) and Yakov Rekhter (IBM). Recreations of the protocol were printed on souvenir napkins. Guests were also greeted by Stephanie Waslohn, archivist for the Center for Cisco Heritage. Jabloner and Waslohn provided visitors further insight into Silicon Valley’s rich corporate history and gave Cisco employees a chance to learn more about their company’s history and culture.

CHM’s Education Department also offered several family activities that encourage intergenerational explorations of computers and their history. Across from the Center for Cisco Heritage booth, visitors were greeted by volunteers from our Teen Internship Program. These high school students go through a rigorous selection and interview process, followed by several weeks of training with our education specialist, Emily Stupfel, who teaches them about our family programs and how to make the Museum a place for families to learn and be together. Her work to make CHM a community hub was seen in action this weekend through our many family experiences available.

Throughout the weekend, the teen-managed Exploration Station was bombarded by excited kids, full of questions. The long table displayed a number of carefully selected artifacts for guests to pick up, touch, and even use! The Exploration Station featured artifacts like a mechanical calculator from 1913, an abacus, a slide rule, the Curta calculator, and a fully functional IBM 26 Key Punch. This last artifact was one of the most popular attractions, as children could punch their names or a message into a card to keep as a memento. Our interns were ready to explain the stories and uses behind each of the artifacts and to provide computing touch points for children and adults alike.

Curta calculator, 1950-1960s. The Curta calculator has deep connections with larger historical movements. This small, cylindrical calculator can fit in your palm and is operated by a series of slides and cranks. The Curta’s inventor, Curt Herzstark, was an Austrian engineer who finally found the courage to pursue his designs while interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II. Allowing children to physically interact with objects like these illuminates history. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102626591.

Ideas and themes embedded in our computing artifacts—some of which are over 200 years old!—were also made accessible through our Family Activity Stations. These stations cater to visitors of all ages and are offered on select Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Here, families can work together to innovate and create their own experiments, making meaningful connections to computer history. One of the stations was dedicated to Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine, first built in 1888. It was developed to calculate the results from the 1890 US Census, when 63 million people lived in our country. The central technology behind this machine is a simple circuit technology that is ubiquitous today but on a much smaller scale. Using Raspberry Pi computers, breadboards, jumper wires, and other materials, families built their own circuits to turn on an LED light bulb—right next to Hollerith’s machine. “I think it was great,” one visitor said. “I had to try two times, but I finally got it!”

Families learn about circuit technology using Raspberry Pi computers, jumper wires, and other materials near the Hollerith Machine in Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.

Teen interns also led families in activities that focused on the importance of prototyping. Interns guided participants through the design process and provided materials to help them build physical models of their ideas near the PalmPilot display in our Mobile Computing gallery, which includes an early wooden prototype of the PalmPilot built by Palm cofounder Jeff Hawkins in ca. 1995. “This is a very effective activity for inspiring kids to think, imagine, and have hands on prototyping workflow,” said a parent participant. When asked how technology could help them solve a problem in their life, participants came up with a variety of ideas, like a cooking robot or a “happiness generator.” The latter was envisioned as a “floating-type” robot that uses facial recognition to learn users’ emotions and help cheer them up when they’re feeling sad. “The gallery activities made kids stop, think, participate, and brainstorm an idea,” said another guest.

Left: Jeff Hawkins tested the PalmPilot’s design with this model, using a chopstick for a stylus. He took pretend notes in meetings, and counted the steps it took to perform common tasks. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102716262. Right: Activity feedback from one of our young participants.

For guests who preferred to set their own pace, the Education Department also gave visitors a self-guided family activity. Designed for families with younger children, these handouts asked visitors to be on the lookout for three objects in each of our gallery spaces. When they found them, kids could engage more with the artifact through questions and by drawing prompts that helped connect each artifact to something in their own life.

Community and family programming, like our Exploration Stations and family tours and activities stations are offered most Saturdays. Call ahead to check our offerings. In combination with our demonstration labs, where we feature a fully functional PDP-1 and an IBM 1401 restored and operated by a team of dedicated volunteers, CHM is more than a museum—it is a community hub where visitors of all ages can experience history and make connections with the technology they use in their own lives. We especially enjoyed sharing our educational programming with the Cisco community.

About the Center for Cisco Heritage

The Center for Cisco Heritage is an ongoing four-year collaboration between the Computer History Museum and Cisco Systems. For more information on the project, visit computerhistory.org/ciscoarchive/ or contact heritage@cisco.com.

CHM is grateful to Cisco and the many other corporations that support the Museum.

The post Family & Community Programming and Corporate History at CHM’s Cisco Weekend appeared first on CHM.

Today, the potential for space exploration seems to be taking off. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has successfully launched a reusable rocket. Scientists at the National Science Foundation’s LIGO discovered gravitational waves, confirming Einstein’s vision of ripples in the space-time continuum. And putting a human on Mars has become a goal NASA and Elon Musk hope to achieve in our lifetimes. However, these organizations all face a major limitation in their quests to reach infinity and beyond: a lack of resources in space.

Seattle-based Planetary Resources wants to solve this problem by utilizing a relatively close asset: asteroids. The space startup is developing technology to mine asteroids for valuable minerals and, more importantly, water. In conversation with Museum CEO John Hollar on March 9, Planetary Resources President and CEO Chris Lewicki shared why the company is specifically focused on asteroids.

As “leftovers” from the formation of the solar system, asteroids carry an abundance of water, a versatile and valuable resource in space. It can shield travelers and spacecraft from cosmic rays and be converted into an extremely efficient rocket fuel. Readily available fuel is crucial, as spacecraft burn the majority of what they can carry as they exit the first 300 kilometers of Earth’s gravity well. Beyond those first 300 kilometers, much less fuel is required to propel a spacecraft to anywhere in the inner solar system. (See the video below for an illustrated explanation.)

Asteroids are also an ideal resource because of the relatively minimal energy required to reach them from Earth. “It’s even easier than getting to the surface of the moon,” said Lewicki. “It’s kind of the beachfront in the new real estate that we are going to be developing and hopefully setting up homes and businesses on.”

The first step toward this goal is identifying the best location in space to begin the mining process. Lewicki and his team are launching “robotic geologists” into space to assess the accessibility and water content of several near-Earth asteroids. By better understanding the materials and environment around near-Earth asteroids, Planetary Resources can start designing the tools and technology to extract the materials. “It’s going to happen in a way that’s different from what you do on Earth,” said Lewicki.”On Earth you have to take into account how much things weigh, and diesel and labor and environmental regulations… You don’t have any of those problems in space.”

One of Planetary Resources’ “robotic geologists” is the Arkyd 6, built in Redmond, Washington. It is scheduled to launch later this year. It will be used to test the company’s prospecting and space-based observation technologies. (Image Courtesy of Planetary Resources)

Planetary Resources envisions the mining process as being totally autonomous. “No astronauts will be necessary,” Lewicki said. “The same reason we’re not going to need people to drive our cars very soon and the same reason why we have surgical robots… we can use those technologies to put robots in a dangerous, non-life-supporting environment and do this thankless work on a barren rock orbiting the sun.”

However, asteroid mining isn’t Planetary Resources’ only project. The company has also created the first-ever commercial mid wavelength infrared sensor, which it added to the spacecraft sent into space to study asteroids. These sophisticated sensors can detect water and thermal signatures, enabling them to to capture incredibly detailed data about Earth. “What we see with other imaging technologies is the same thing we get with our eyeballs… I can take a picture of a car engine, and whether that engine is running or not you have no idea. It’s gray,” Lewicki said. “But if you take a thermal image of that car engine, it’s night and day. Not only can you tell if it’s running or not, but you know that it used to be running and if the car drove away, you could see the warm spot it left in the parking lot.” This imaging system could enable better tracking of crop growth, forest fires and even climate change.

Based in Redmond, Washington, the company has focused on asteroid mining since it was founded in 2009. It was originally named Arkyd Astronautics, derived from Arakyd Industries, a resource-hunting droid developer in the Star Wars universe. After several years in stealth mode, the company announced its asteroid mining plans in 2012. Since then, it’s attracted investment from Larry Page, Richard Branson and Eric Schmidt. Planetary Resources’ co-founders, Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson, invited Chris Lewicki to join the company in 2010.

NASA’s Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to fly by the planet Neptune. Pictured is a button commemorating the mission. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102657339

Lewicki’s interest in space began in childhood. “I remember in eighth grade watching the newspapers… or on the evening news Flying by the Planet Neptune,” Lewicki said. “It was this blue dot that was out there on the edge of the solar system… And then one day, all at once, it was a place. There were clouds and there were moons… It was something where I realized ‘I want to do that.’”

He left his home state of Wisconsin to study aerospace engineering at the University of Arizona and started participating in NASA missions as a student. After graduating, he started working at NASA full-time, going on to work closely on Mars Rovers and the Phoenix Mars Lander. He was Flight Director for the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Surface Mission Manager for the Phoenix Mars Lander. Lewicki even has an asteroid named after him: 13609 Lewicki.

“Our Brain’s Development in a Technological World: Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Research Psychologist Larry Rosen in Conversation with Lisa Krieger of the San Jose Mercury News,” CHM Live, February 15, 2018.

“We live in really extraordinary times. We’re witnessing an explosion in the diversity and the accessibility of these amazing computers that we carry in our pockets and have on our desks,” said Lisa Krieger of the San Jose Mercury News. The CHM Live event, “Our Brain’s Development in a Technological World,” held at the Computer History Museum (CHM) on February 15, consisted of a panel discussion about how technology affects our brains and learning, with a focus on its impact on youth. The panel was moderated by Krieger, and members of the panel included: Adam Gazzaley, neuroscientist and founder and executive director of Neuroscape; Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, professor of Education, Psychology, and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California; and Larry Rosen, research psychologist and professor emeritus at California State University at Dominguez Hills.

Gazzaley began by introducing basic information about the brain, focusing on the two major roles our brains have: to “sense things” and then to “respond.” According to Gazzaley, these functions are important because of how they relate to cognitive control. Cognitive control allows us to create meaning around us. It allows us to focus, controls our working memory, and manages our goal setting abilities. These three roles play a major part in how our brains work and, in turn, how we function.

Larry Rosen discussed how technology can impact our anxiety by highlighting our natural need for, and the pressure around, constant connectivity. According to consumer research, technology is reaching consumers faster and faster. As consumers engage with more technology, they also claim that their ability to multitask is growing—however that may not be true. While people think they can successfully multitask, the reality is we are incapable of successfully focusing on multiple things at once; however, the desire to use technology for multiple purposes increases the more time we spend on our devices. This need to be using technology constantly has led to discussion about technology addiction. But Rosen believes that people’s connection to technology is not the same as addiction, stating, “Addiction should give us some sort of a good feeling, a pleasurable feeling. ” He believes technology is more like an obsession or compulsion, which gives us an anxious feeling when we haven’t “checked in.” Rosen went on to say, “What we are feeling is a lot of pressure that we have to connect, that we feel a responsibility to connect, and that’s the anxiety-provoking part.”

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang talked about how using technology affects the brain, especially the adolescent brain. She suggested that the constant use of technology is hijacking one’s ability to form high-level meaning within their environment. Immordino-Yang goes on to clarify that technology isn’t necessarily the problem, but the way in which we use technology to set expectations and receive validation is where issues can arise. Facetiming with a family member across the world is not the issue, however the need for “likes” on social media could be more problematic. For youth, this need for immediate attention can impact one’s identity by potentially creating a superficial view of self.

The panel continued to evaluate how the pervasiveness of technology impacts our brains and society’s overall well-being. Issues such as distraction and the digital divide were suggested as examples of how technology has impacted the brain’s ability to develop. Multitasking continued to be brought up as one of the largest negative effects of technology. Our need to look at multiple screens for a variety of purposes and tasks has affected our ability to learn, reason, and remember because of our inability to truly focus on numerous things at once. Another major concern with technology, the panel asserted, is that people are not using technology to create but to consume.

The evening ended with a discussion about how technology can be used in educational settings. Rather than calling for a complete ban of technology in classrooms, the panel advocated for educators to consider ways that technology could be integrated and used in positive ways. Strategies were as simple as moving personal or unnecessary technology devices into another room, or taking breaks to practice mindfulness exercises. Gazzaley even discussed a game his company is working on that could be a non-drug alternative for youth with ADHD.

Technology is not going anywhere. In fact the opposite is happening. But as technology continues to become further embedded in our everyday lives so does a better understanding of its effects on our brains and, with that, a better ability to integrate and use technology in positive, meaningful ways.

Watch the Full Conversation

As a long-time, self-proclaimed “space nut,” Lewicki is excited about what the future holds for space exploration. “I think what really excites me every day about what we’re doing is having the opportunity in the next 10, 20 years for space to be a place not just for astronauts, not just for billionaire space tourists, but a place where more and more people live and work and play,”

The post Our Minds on Tech: How Technology Affects the Human Brain appeared first on CHM.