I spent yesterday afternoon revisiting CuriOdyssey (formerly the Coyote Point Museum: read this on the name change), a small jewel of a museum.  The inside exhibits are kid-friendly, interactive, and well-thought out.  The outside exhibits are of non-releasable animals illustrative of some of the species native to the San Francisco Bay Area:

CuriOdyssey's goal - through exhibits, education programs, and camps - is to provide up close and personal experiences with the natural world. To do that, we regularly encourage kids to interact directly with phenomena that they see around them every day. We don't use fake things to teach children about science and nature. Instead, we give them real things to explore - like water, sun images, colored lights, sand, and water. By doing that we stimulate their curiosity and encourage the learning process.

Most of my time was spent with Executive Director Rachel Meyer, which was like meeting an old friend.  The main topics:

• Institutions like CuriOdyssey and communicating the wonder & excitement of science
• My notion that there's a loosely linked "tribe" (for lack of a better world) of folks who are invested in communicating science.  We touched on:
  • Science Online (I encouraged her to attend ScienceOnline 2013)
  • DoubleX Science
  • BoingBoing Science (I had previously forwarded Maggie Koerth-Baker's My Favorite Museum Exhibit post)
  • David Kroll's new job...
  • The whole "Maker Movement" -- more than Maker Faire
• Science education in k-8, in the classroom and elsewhere.