Let's Get Critical, Critical
edutainment round up: convergence, emergence, divergence, detergent.
Are museums little more than edutainers? Here are some interesting internet link things about museums and entercation.
Stephen Asma doesn’t live near an inner city bus stop, but he does write about edutainment and museums, in his cuddly-titled book, “Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums.” Asma relates the story of a T. Rex named Sue, a glam-rock covers of Johnny Cash dinosaur exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum.
Asma also examines the phenomenon of “edutainment” including the ways in which museums use spectacle and fantasy in order to illuminate and educate, how much of current museum offerings are driven by a quest for large visitation numbers and the question of the relationship between big business, politics and what we learn at any moment in history.
Less than fifteen percent of the Field Museum’s funding comes from admissions. In order to raise the $8 million to acquire T. rex Sue, the Field partnered with Disney World and McDonald’s. “To my mind,” Asma writes, “Sue represents the best and the worst of edutainment.”
We take pause to wonder how this is in any way the best of edutainment, but I guess we’ll just have to buy his book!!!~!!
Elsewhere in the edutainmentsphere:
- From the far reaches of blogs which use inappropriate gradients comes “Edutainment and Convergence Today” (no joke!), which manages to synergistically combine two of the most annoying buzzwords of the last 50 years in one irrelevant blog title.
- Another edutainmentblog, this one merely called “Edutainment” has a piece on how to draw Web 2.0 logos. Awesome!
- Is edutainment more acceptable if it’s historical (or perhaps if we just call it “engaging education)? The US Holocaust Museum, which, we read, has sworn off all “disneyfication” and edutainment, added the Bergson Group to an exhibit, a troupe of edutainers who performed during WWII to bring awareness to the burgeoning holocaust.
- Finally, KRS-1 / BDP’s 1990 LP “Edutainment.” Dude was writing about edutainment spheres in 1990!
 So grab the sphere of life and aim it /and you’ll be guided by Edutainment.
above: the edutainmentsphere in cube form
Tags: barftastic, convergence, corporate sponsorship, edutainment, entercation, imagineering, infotainment, web 2.0 
Thanks for free publicity, but I am a national producer/director by trade who decided to get a PhD in Higher Education 4 years ago. The blog began as part of the dissertation process and the mandatory research at my job because of the impending transition to HD television and how we would use wireless devices and web 2.0 tools and podcasts to get out our message to the American public.
Give the blog a chance. It is a mix of research interviews which will continue for the next 5 -10 years to watch the evolution along with headlines and video about the subject and the religious, military, government, business and high education connection that began with edutainment way before Robert Heyman and KRS 1 who deserve credit for coining and popularizing the terms. Edutainment began with wall paintings and graffiti in Egypt and Babylon, continued through Greece, Alexandria and Rome and was picked up by the Islamic Empire, the Roman Catholic Church and the Ottoman Turks until the University of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge and the Colonial Universities began the modern movement. Remember, edutainment has always been used as an attention getter and keeper in the form of storytelling, theatre, films and games. Convergence emerged from WWII with the Manhattan Project, the Space Race and the Cold War which produced military research and civilian projects that we all use today that has blurred the line between phones, computers, cameras, recording devices, gaming platforms and televisions.
Dear sir,
If I told you that I was an international superproducer / director of director’s who rejects PhD candidates on the regular, would it make a bit of difference to the topic at hand?
The word edutainment has been used approximately four times prior to AD 1990. We mock it so not because of its so-called utility value (although we’re sure Egyptian graffiti was the bomb), but rather because it’s a ridiculous buzzword worthy of scorn and ridicule, much like “emergence,” “synergy,” et ceteron. Ditto convergence. Things have always “emerged together” in some sort or another, but marketing assholes have only recently taken upon the word. The point is, historical parallels bear no precedent for 5th Avenue neologisms.
However, we wish you the best of luck in your blogging ad-venture (get it, people have tried to sell products in fun and exciting ways since the dawn of time!), and we hope you come back soon whenever you’re in need of a diverting divergence.