Working with sister organizations

I had the joy of meeting with many of my colleagues from the other Saint Louis Zoo-Museum District (ZMD) institutions today to share Feeling the Stars with them.  It was great to hear what they they have already done in terms of Universal Design and what they would like to do.  

Each institution has done something to help visitors with exceptionalities.  The Saint Louis Art Museum has special tours, the Missouri History Museum has Brailled many of their exhibit labels in the past, the Zoo has an amazing pictorial tour map for visitors who have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the Missouri Botanical Gardens has guided tours and a few line drawing tactiles.

The group experienced the program just as the visitors would, pausing to ask questions as we went.  The Botanical Gardens was especially excited to get started making their own tactile books and has planned to come back in the future to see how the EZ-Brailler thermovac machine we have works.

It was really uplifting to meet with colleagues from around the city and see how they all are really trying to make a difference for all of their visitors too.  Here's to Saint Louis' cultural institutions becoming more and more accessible to all visitors!

Feeling the Stars at the Great Lakes Planetarium Association Conference 2013

I went to my first professional Planetarium conference last week to present my paper that led to the creation of our Feeling the Stars program for The Little Star That Could.   It was a fantastic three-and-a-half days of learning entirely about best practices in the Planetarium and museum field.  We got to discuss what we do for our visitors and we talked a bit about how Universal Design is the best route as helps not just its intended audience.  

Little Star also got to make a couple early debuts and meet some colleagues outside the Planetarium world.  The conference paired at times with the Illinois Association of Museums (IAM) as well, so he met many professionals from museums, zoos and NASA as well. 

Is that giraffe going to eat me?!  Seriously, he's walking over here!

Little Star meets Astronaut Scott Altman, commander of the last servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope

Many of my colleagues told me as well over the first couple days before I presented my paper that they have shown or currently show Little Star in their own Planetariums and that they were curious about my paper.

I was very grateful for their encouragement in the days leading up to my presentation because I was pretty nervous.  I've always loved public speaking/theater/teaching, and speech giving has always come naturally to me.  This was the first time, however, that I presented an academic paper or spoken in front of my colleagues in my chosen field.  So maybe nervous is an understatement - terrified probably sums it up better.

Fortunately, my father had a lot of practice presenting academic papers over the years and helped me prepare for the best and the worst, so at least I had that in my back pocket.  I also had a lot of friendly faces in my audience (which normally scares me more to have people I know listening, but this time it was also nice).  

When the time came, I presented my paper (which I know was recorded and if I find a copy I will try to post here).  I covered all the details I could in my ten minutes; making sure to discuss why reaching out to visitors who are blind/have low vision is important, how it fits in with elementary school science standards, how the program works and the results of the first couple of runs of the program.  

Talking about the 1:40 Scale Model of the Zeiss Universarium Mark IX and Orthwein StarBay of the McDonnell Planetarium

Presenting all the tactile and microwavable star characters

Talking about the tactile follow-along book in twin vision

When I was done there was some time for questions and I braced myself not knowing what to expect.  I had three questions posed to me:

Q) "Is this program available to other Planetariums?"

A) My goal was to have the program available to other planetaria world wide once I got it going at my own.  The time for it to start making its way into the world is quite soon now, I think!



Q) "Who makes the tactiles and would it be possible to get a set of the star characters and/or a book?"

A) I currently am the only one making all the components of the program.  I would be happy to make some for you but in all honesty it might take me a while.


Q) "Could you explain Lighthouse for the Blind - Saint Louis' role a little more?"

A)  LHB was absolutely wonderful in providing insight into the program and giving advice on what would and would not work.  The support they provided, both financially and otherwise had been incredible.  They are the reason that the program was able to take off and start reaching its target audience.  Without LHB, this program would still be a dream that I turned in as a paper my first semester in grad school.


And then my time was up.  It went far better than I expected!  I received nothing but kind words and excitement that matched my own about my program.  Several of my colleagues have now expressed interest in having the program at their own Planetariums and I hope that very soon we can make that happen!  It was absolutely amazing to have the program recognized so highly by my colleagues!

The other really cool thing was that I got to meet representatives from Audio-Visual Imagineering (AVI) - the company that re-produced The Little Star That Could in 2005 to update the changes to Pluto and make the show full-dome.  They were incredibly kind and it was a lot of fun to show them what I'd made.  Later in the day after my presentation, they also offered to help me with Feeling the Stars!  Hopefully this really does mean that soon there will be more Planetaria with my program, reaching out to their own visitors in need of the adaptive elements!  I was so excited and moved by everyone's generosity, excitement and kindness!



I know I end a lot of my posts with thank yous, but I could not have gotten the program to where it is without the people I thank...

I have to thank Seiler Instruments for your generosity in helping me get to GLPA, for believing in me and my program and most importantly, for believing in my Planetarium.  I also want to thank my mentor, John, as well as Brian for your continual encouragement and support of me and my program and Bill and Eric for your support and for covering for me in my absence.  Thank you to Ann and Wilfried from Carl Zeiss too for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to my paper!  Thank you to my parents for your continued support - especially my dad for helping me prepare for my presentation.  And finally, to all my colleagues from GLPA who have given me so much encouragement to continue with my work - I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Little Star makes more friends

Due to this post talking about children, there will be no pictures.


Today, Little Star had some visitors come for the Feeling the Stars program from the Saint Louis Society.  Only one of the seven children who came had low vision, but all of them had an exceptionality.  Their group leader asked for the program due to its tactile nature, as she thought the kids would benefit from it.

The children all touched the model and the tactile stars, enjoying the different touchable sensations.  The stars were very popular, especially Big Daddy (because of his "cool shades") and Mr. Angry Blue-White Star.  They also noticed the temperature differences too.

Even though all the children could see the projections on the dome, they all received a tactile follow-along book to use during the show.  The books may have gone over best of all!  The kids loved studying both the raised images and reading the printed text on the large-print pages.

The kids enjoyed the story, picking out favorite characters and recognizing some they met in the plush characters before the show.  They also really liked the stars and when the outlines of the constellations would appear in the sky.

A very special moment occured during the program as well;  I was informed by one of the teachers that the book worked better than we expected for one of the little boys.  Devon* has Autism, and I was told he is for the most part, non-verbal.  When he received the book, he turned to one of the counselors who were sitting with the kids and started reading the book aloud.  We aren't sure what about the book encouraged him to start reading to the counselor but it was a reminder that we never can predict perfectly what will truly benefit our visitors.

This is why Universal Design is SO important in the Museum world and the field of Education.  The more options to access information a person has, the more likely they are to succeed and gain meaning.


The Feeling the Stars program may have started as a program for visitors who are blind or have low vision, but today taught me that its potential to reach so many more audiences expands past its original audience.  I thank the Saint Louis Society and all the wonderful children I was privileged to work with this morning for opening up even more doors for different audiences to come and explore the universe with The Little Star That Could.




*Names have been changed to protect privacy

Learning from kids at Space Camp - SCIVIS Year Two

Little Star made his way back to Space Camp this year again this year  for the Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired Students (SCIVIS).  We were with high school kids this year, so he mostly hung out in my bag, but he made a few apperences.  Even the high school age kids thought he was a great idea and useful (high praise indeed!).

Little Star wants to climb the Pamper Pole just like the fearless vonBraun Advanced Space Academy team before him... too bad he doesn't quite fit in the safety harness...

The kids helped me a lot this year though by teaching me how to give better description of objects, how to give better directions (i.e. when directing someone around a star chart verbally) and they helped me figure out how to create better tactiles.  The young adults I worked with were patient with me in helping me to figure out how to best get the ideas of our live planetarium shows across to them when using a tactile star chart.

Furthermore, I got some incredibly helpful pointers from some very kind TVIs and O&Ms this year as well for how to create more effective star charts.  Once again, simpler is better.  It was suggested that I make several charts showing just a few constellations at a time, and then one overall chart that shows how they all fit together.  All of a sudden, every problem I'd had was solved and what I was trying to explain made more sense to those experiencing my explanations   Hopefully with the knowledge I gained, I can make some leaps ahead with adapting our next show - our Live Sky Tonight show!