What did you enjoy reading the most in 2019? It’s always good to reflect at the end of the year before starting a new one – and it was really interesting to see which of our blog posts were the most popular! Did you catch all of these?
Scroll through this list, and catch up on our top blogs you may have missed throughout the year.
1. Visual Thinking Strategies and Visible Thinking
No surprise this one – this blog has been a perennial favourite since it was first published way back in 2013. Update and refreshed for 2019, it was our top read on the Thinking Museum website. The two methods are often confused and this post aims to set out the differences and similarities between the two.
Read more about Visual Thinking Strategies and Visible Thinking
2. How to Use Visible Thinking Routines on Guided Tours
Our second most popular post describes how you can use thinking routines on guided tours to create more interaction and engagement with your participants.
Read more about the benefits too: How to Use Visible Thinking Routines on Guided Tours
3.Verbal Tools to Make your Guided Tours More Interactive
A recent post this focuses on the verbal facilitation tools that you can use to help to engage participants and make sure everyone is involved on a guided tour. See the full list and how you can integrate these into your guided tours!
Read more about Verbal Tools to Make your Guided Tours More Interactive
4. For the Joy of Learning: Adults, Museums and Thinking Routines
When we talk about engagement in the museum, we are often referring to engaging young people, teenagers, non-traditional museum-goers and school groups. However, we’re missing a trick if we’re are not creating meaningful programming for adult audiences too. This post looks at ways in which we can design experiences for adults that push beyond the traditional lecture or walk-and-talk guided tour.
Read more about For the Joy of Learning: Adults, Museums and Thinking Routines
5. More than a Strategy: Building a Culture of Thinking
When this was first published in 2013, this was shared so widely that it caused the most page views in a day recorded on the Thinking Museum website (record still stands!). This post stresses that the use of thinking routines is more than a strategy to use as and when required in the museum – when used regularly and as part of the learning fabric of the environment, these routines help to develop what Ron Ritchhart calls a ‘culture of thinking‘.
How can you create this ‘culture of thinking’? Read more in More than a Strategy: Building a Culture of Thinking
6. A Quick Guide to Facilitation Skills on Guided Tours
One of my favourite posts (not least because of the photo that accompanies it), this is our quick guide to using facilitation skills to create participant-centred, discussion-based guided tours! There are many skills to being an effective facilitator, and for our ‘Visible Thinking in the Museum‘ trainings we focus and offer coaching around 4 areas.
Read more about these 4 key components of facilitation for Visible Thinking in the Museum methodology.
And that’s it – our top 6 posts for 2019. Happy reading! Let us know what articles you would like us to write in 2020 in the comments below.