I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting with scientist Margery Gordon. On the behind-the-scenes tour, I was able to learn about how the employees educate visitors to the museum. Some opportunities that I got to experience were working with the table carts and going into one of the educational rooms in the museum. The table cart was a fun activity because my tour group got to separate artifacts found during an excavation in the Middle East and the United States. Our job was to separate the artifacts based on their different characteristics. We found out that some of the artifacts were from 2000 years ago. Also, the job of the employees at the museum is to constantly make the visitors critical thinkers when learning at the museum. There is so much to question when being at the museum because there are many items in every exhibit to read about. After the tour, our assignment was to make a PowerPoint based on what we learned at the museum. Then, we had to present this presentation to our class, which helped me work on my communication skills. Preparing for this was a little hard because we had to take pictures and notes during the tour. All in all, this experience taught me a lot about museums and what goes into teaching the public about the items in museums.

Collections: Behind-The-Scenes in the Smithsonian NMNH

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