Ideabox: CD’s and CD cases
photo credit to ChristopherA Due to the upswing of digitally-downloaded music, mp3 players, et al. there are a lot fewer junk CD’s and spare CD cases lying around these days.  This is certainly good for the planet, but not so great for those of us who like making cool projects out of them.  Fortunately, computer programs still end up replaced, CD-R’s burn with skips in them and have to be redone, and random CD cases still turn up in the bottom of you

Talk to Me: Websites that Capture Museum Experiences
I’m working on the problem of experiential museums and the way they represent themselves on the internet.  Though obviously some museums have an impressive web presence on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. I’m specifically interested in museums’ own home websites, where one hopefully gets the clearest message about who these museums are and what it is like being there. There are a number of art museums that have very impressive websites (Boston’s MFA is top of my list largely due to familiarity, but there are certainly others), however I feel that in general art museums have it easiest, being in general object-centric.  (Certainly there are excep

Looking through a New Lens: Interdisciplinary Programming (Even on a Small Budget)
This past week was the annual New England Museum Association conference, in Nashua, NH.  There were a number of fascinating sessions, ranging from ways to use content-embedded mapping projects, to the use of art in non-traditional spaces to further the ’story’ of history or science, to ‘outside the box’ thinking about greening museums.  (Expect more thinking on some of those topics from me in the future!) So, other than taking copious notes, wishing the hotel were just a few degrees warmer, and poking around the exhibit hall, what was I up to?

Just for Fun: What’s in your brain?
It’s not every day that one comes across art that so perfectly ties in with a blog named “Brain Popcorn.”  However, thanks to a tweet from Paul Orselli, I wandered over to Behance Network to discover “What have you got in your head?“ (My personal favorite is this brain made of star-shaped pasta.  Fabulous.  Even if today, my brain is made of chocolate wrapped in a to-do list.)

Another reason to love November
Is it just too long until National Poetry Month for you?  It certainly is for me–which is why it’s awesome that November is  Family Literacy Month. The central idea behind Family Literacy Month is that parents and other adult role models are keystones to their children’s habits of, attitudes toward, and grasp of reading.  If you’re looking for some fun ways to incorporate literacy activities into your day, here are a few places to get started: