We Heart PlayLab

We had some before-hours fun this morning with Zeum's newest exhibit, PlayLab! Evidence...

MPL: a place to rock out...and express yourself

HI MY NAME IS ERIC BEVERLY BUT EVERYBODY CALLS ME EB!!! its freaking awesome at Zeum - it was a perfect match for me. When i got hired and started to work it felt like i was married to Zeum ,cool people different personalities,and most of all helping all the kids. I love everything at Zeum ,but my favorite part is M..P..L.. music production lab. Music production lab is my favorite because its a good way to express yourself and tell how your feeling . AND SO ON LIKE DENZEL SAYS.....the technology of it was not that hard to learn it came to me quickly. But the skill that benifits working in m.p.l is my outgoingness, I really like the music production lab beaucse kids come in and dress up and try thier hardest, some act silly and its really funny but overall my experience with Zeum is mind blowing....... but yeah this is my blog to the world hope you digg it................................!! PEACE!! oh yeah and here is some people in m.p.l rocking out.

A Day In the Life of Yvane: ZEUM Edition

This is a sample of our morning workshops.


Hello everyone. My name's Yvane, I work at Zeum, and I'm what you would call a ZeumMaster. If you're wondering what that is, well its pretty much a master of Zeum. And if you're still wondering what Zeum is, well I'll give you the definition: San Francisco's hands-on, multimedia arts and technology museum for kids. And it pretty awesome. I've only been working here for a little over a month, but I LOVE it.

As a young child I'd always pass by Zeum to stop by the Yerba Buena Gardens playground a.k.a. The Big Slide. You see, I'd always pass by Zeum, but I never actually knew what went on inside. Finally, early last year

in 2008, as a sophomore in high school, that's right SOPHOMORE. You're probably wondering why a tenth grader is visiting a museum targeted for 3-12 year olds right? Well, I came here on a field trip with Miss Ashkenes' Honor's English class and did a short movie workshop regarding immigration. Though the workshop was pretty short since we only had a little amount of time, my fellow 15-year-old classmates and I had a lot of fun. So yeah that's my fondest (more like only) memory of Zeum prior to working here this summer. But look at me now. I've been officially been working here for about a month and 5 days. And I've got tons of stories to tell that I can even fill up a book. Unfortunately since I have to get back on the floor and go back to my shift, I can't share

them all. But I will share a few.

So once upon a time, I remember ending my first week of work with a really awesome day.

That day was the same day I let out some of my Russian and I first brought out the uke on the floor (I remember thinking I would get in trouble for having the uke out, but it turns out the staff loves it!). Well anyways, I was stationed in the Animator's Studio and I overheard a family talking in Russian. Since I recognized the language, I waved to the lady, and greeted her, "Zdrastbyute!" which is Russian for hello. The lady greeted me back in Russian and gave me a warm smile. A little later when I was stat

ioned in Main, I met a little girl from the same party and she was so amazed about the fact that I knew how to speak Russian, that I actually ended up singing her a song I wrote for my Russian final while playing the uke. After I finished singing her my song, she asked me to perform it in front of her mom and her mom's friend. Luckily they loved it and were impressed that a Filipino girl knew how to speak their native language. And after I sang my Russian final in front of them, we ended up jamming to old traditional Russian folk songs.

A little while later, I introduced the little girl who was so amazed that I knew how to speak Russian, Ashley, to one of my fellow co-workers. The three of us started jamming to the uke, attempting to freestyle. Good times. And because I met these two awesome parents originally from Hawaii, I had a long awesome conversation with them about Hawaii, the uke, and life in the Bay Area (they just recently moved to the East Bay). And while that was happening, it turns out Ashley met the whole Zeum staff! Before she left she was already planning her next visit to Zeum. How awesome is that?

And on that same day right before we were about to close, a mother and her young daughter, Hannah, from Vancouver, came to check the place out. The young toddler invited me to build a castle in the playlab. And because they were having so much fun, they planned on coming back the next day. I was so ready for the "Highlight of the Day" portion of our end-of the-day meeting where Ari (for my first week of work at least), usually asks everyone to share a moment that really stood out in the ZeumMasters' eyes/ brought a smile to their faces. Sadly we didn't do a "Highlight of the Day" portion for that meeting, but its alright since now I'm sharing that day to whoever maybe reading this.

Well, unfortunately I'm out of time. I'll pretty much give you a few of my other highlights

in quick notes: a mom singing Hannah Montana, my little sister performing in front of Zeum Staff, lip synching in DW, reuniting with two of my kindergarten classmates as ZeumMasters, making a short a rap about filling out a Zeum survey, me and my fellow ZeumMasters jammin' to Michael Jackson while closing up, Zeum campers taking on the role of a ZeumMaster, becoming a visitor at my own job, and lots lots lots more. Well that's all for now folks, I'll share more stories with you the next time I return to the ZeumMasters Blogspot. Otherwise if you're too eager to see what's going on with my life as a ZeumMaster or my school projects, checkout my Youtube account by clicking the link below. Aloha for now.

And this is a taste of what can happen at the end of the day meetings.

Dancing Freestyle

Heeyy everyone! [: My name's Yvonne and I am a new ZEUMmaster! This job is extremely tiring, but it's worth it! When I was waiting to be interviewed, I thought everyone was going to be strict and really mean. I thought wrong. They were SUPERR nice and I was like "Ohh, I have nothing to worry about!" Every staff member was very friendly. People say I'm a little shy, but with the ZEUM staff members, I've broken out of my shell already! [: I've only been here for about two weeks and I've already made some friends. I love watching all the families and camps come through the door. Every day I get inspired by all the creativity that I see from everyone. This isn't like those boring jobs that people would dislike having to wake up every morning to go to. I get excited when I know it's time to work at ZEUM. To me, this is like an extra curricular activity.

I'm a Polynesian dancer, lion dancer, sketcher, and now I am a ZEUMmaster.In Polynesian dance, they make you freestyle what you've learned, and at ZEUM, I see kids AND adults dance and freestyle at the MUSIC PRODUCTION LAB (MPL) I play the drums in lion dance and everyone depends on the drums or else the lions have nothing to move to. Being in that position with so much power(muahhaha), I can make them dance to anything and they have to follow. At ZEUM, I see people doing their crazy dance moves and it inspires me what I could do to the lions [; When I'm at the Clay Animation Studio, I see people make these really cool figures and then I would go home and sketch it out
ZEUM ROCKS!!!!!!! :P

The Path to Passion...at Zeum

Love, passion, and inspiration motivate one to strive for his or her dream. They have brought me to Zeum and I could not have asked for more.

I have always enjoyed working with kids and had a passion in arts and craft since I was in elementary school. I was pumped when I found out that at Zeum I was going to be able to combine both of them together. What more could I ask for? Well guess what? Working at Zeum gave me more than just the opportunity to work with kids and art. I received a priceless gift unexpectedly. The chance to help kids create big smiles and laughter. :D


Although I have only been working at Zeum for a month, I already have many fond memories. One that stood out the most was this one friday when two big summer camps came to Zeum around the same time. I was in digital workshop and I did not anticipate that I would have to get people to start a line to get into the room. I was working alone in that room and kids were screaming for help. Thankfully, I was laughing throughout the whole experience. I guess it is a natural cover up for me when I'm under stress, but the laughter pulled the stress right out of me. This one little 6 year old boy was too short to be seen through the camera so he had his friends carry him up and they ended up taking a group picture instead. It was hectic, but every kid was satisfied with his or her picture and their group leader thanked me. I was proud of myself because I handled the large group by myself and I managed to stay positive and help each kid individually.

Although I see my friends helping each other out in a daily basis, there's always that magic spark that jumps in my heart when I see young kids help each other. Kids offer help and in return, they just want to have fun. I am glad that Zeum can offer them a place where they can experience art and tech with their friends. Museums in general are places where kids can get an insight to a specific topic, but at Zeum, although it is an art and tech based museum, there are endless opportunities for the kids and their family to "create, collaborate, and communicate" at the same time.

At the end of the day, I would have probably received more than 100 smiles. Although some kids may not have grown all their teeth yet (haha), but those smiles are still worth a million!

-Amy

Alternative Clay Building

There is more than one way to build a clay character. Normally we give the visitors wire shaped into a person and they can make that shape into a four legged animal, butterfly, fish or whatever they choose, but today we learned how to make characters without using wire or a lot of clay. Once we made the characters, we got paired up with another person and had to tell a story with our clay character. Once both partners told their story, we had to come up with one as a team with a conflict and a resolution.

We could use this technique and show visitors. When we get little kids into the clay animation room.

  we could show them this technique so they can build a clay character that they could take home without using wire. This is a great way to get the little kids into building clay characters and not just smashing they clay together. 

Not Just "Josh's Little Sister" ;)

Hey everyone, my name is Jessica. I started knowing about Zeum from my older brother, Josh. He worked at Zeum for about 4 years until he went off to college. I remember coming to Zeum to watch him work, it was fun. He was outgoing and made the kids come out their shell. He made them laugh and i noticed he was very good with kids after seeing that. Everyone knew me at Zeum as "josh's little sister". I didn't mind, well matter a fact, when his co-workers asked me who i was i referred to as "josh's little sister.

I loved going to the second floor of Zeum to watch the kids sing in MPL( Music Production Lab). I was too scared to go up there to sing.( I guess the kids weren't the only one who was shy). I also remember going to some of the"end of the day meetings". It was very interesting...even though I had know clue of what was going on. The more I came, the more I started to think this would be a nice and fun place to work. I talked to my brother about working here, but at the time he didn't really want me working with him, so i kept visiting.

As time went on my aunt wanted me to start looking for a job, so I came back to my brother and said I was applying to Zeum. He finally was okay with it because he said then he could watch me( sure) lol. It then came to me that my future was based on child development and dealing with children. That's when i realized Zeum was more than just a fun place to work, it would further my career.

I then got straight on it and started applying. I remember applying in there staff office, since I was Josh's little sister, his co-workers let me go in there. The same day I got it was the same day I turned it in. I was so anxious to work for Zeum. I wanted to start right away, but of course you have to go through that long old process to get a job, let alone your first job.

The manager at the time, Christian, said he'll call me in about a week or two. For those two weeks I was hoping to get the job. When I received his phone call, I was relieved. He told me to come in for an interview. I was so anxious but nervous..lol. I was interviewed by my friend from my program and Ari, who was the assistant manager of Zeum but is now the manager because Christian went back to school.

I remember the interview so well. I felt good and nerves went away after answering the first couple of questions. Then I had to get a work permit, which is kind of a long process because at the time I was moving so all my information was packed away, but since everyone at Zeum liked me they gave me time. ( I felt even more glad to work at Zeum because they understood that I needed time to get my papers).

When i finally got settled down I returned my work permit in and was almost a ZeumMaster( Not exactly because you have to go through the training because there's so many rooms so you have to learn something new in every space). It was fun to shadow the ZeumMasters at Zeum to observe how they engage with the visitors. It was a great experience because from there I learned more. Also since we all are in the same age group, we have many things in common. They should me how everything works and the first question you should always ask is"Have You Been Here Before?" because depending on there answer there different things you have to do. At first it was kind of scary to engage with the visitor, but the more i started doing it the more it just came to me like second nature..lol.

I was then officially a ZeumMaster. All my hard work paid off. In the beginning I didn't expect to become a ZeumMaster, but here I am almost a half a year working at Zeum. I intend to stay working here until I go off to college. Another crazy thing is, I'm thinking about going to my brothers school in LA( our hometown). After all this, I didnt even end up working with him because he was graduating high school going off to college, which was about the same time I started to apply. "This was fun to talk about my experiences!" ( Blogging is fun)-July 2, 2009

Also the photo above is a self portrait that I created in Zeum's Digital Workshop.

Playing to Learn

Hey, hey, wassuppp?!? I'm Cristina and a new ZeumMaster at the Z house. Lol. I'm just chillaxin at Zeum writing my first blog of all times!!! SUPER COOL HUH!!!! I'm soOOooOo intrigued that I recieved this job. When I was in the process of applying to Zeum I wasn't sure of what Zeum had in store for me. I expected wonderful things but I didn't know that it would be this good. First of all I have a long background of "supervising children" but really I just ABSOLUTELy love KiDZZzz. I swear they brighten up my whole life with one smile. I liteweight wish that I could be SUPERWOMAN and save all children from deviance. LOL, but that's beside tha point..

Not only does the Zeum embody the 3 C's ( Collabration, Communication, and Creativity) it makes the children strive to use their imagination to create wonder and beauty. That's what makes this job AWESOME! Like there are some kids that come to the Zeum with low self-esteem yet, when they leave here they are touched with a light that they can create ANYTHING!!! If I ever can "touch" a child's life and make them feel that at least a lil better than before it's worth it, and at Zeum this is what we do.

Today, specifically we had a training to strengthen our knowledge in how we approach children and help them learn. We are broadening our targeted ages to 3-12 and we need to make changes on how we make things more fun for the younger audience. So anyways today, in the morning we had a training like we do most mornings.

One of our staff led a training this morning to teach zeummasters how children develop and how to interlock this knowlegde into what we do at ZEUM. Well we learned alot, that connected me back to my psychology class. We got to see how kids learn through play. After playing a vicious game of blocks, : p, we quickly saw how children play and where we fall in that process. We were confronted with the issue of playing well and playing to win. We at Zeum don't want to encourage playing to win as much as playing well. Children need to know that collaboration and solving simple problems with creativity is the same as winning. Every object a child makes is in turn them succeeding, it reflects their hard and complete work. At Zeum every one is a champion, because they are challenging themselves to trumpth. WELLL i gotsZ to get back to my JOB!!!

LOVE ALWAYS,

CRiSTiNA

P.S. i LOVE MY JOB!!!

Zeeeeeeeeeummm!

I couldn't sum up everything ZEUM is in one sentence. There are so many possibilities and amazing things that happen here. I just started working here for the summer, and it has already blown me away. It was what I expected and much much more. From the outside, Zeum already stands out from many other museums from it's funky spiral shape and glass exterior. The kids that come by are just awesome. It really brings me back to when I was younger and had a limitless imagination. It's true that children see the world in a completely different perspective, and I'm so grateful that I can be in on the action and that I get to witness this every day I work at Zeum. The creativity just bounces from wall to wall in this building and the energy is always up! After joining the ZeumMaster team I got really excited and I already wanted to show off how great Zeum was to my friends and family. I think it's really great to have a place like Zeum for children to explore their creative sides and break out of their shell. There are so many opportunities here and although this is a children's museum, it's also a place where adults can go back and do things they may not have had the chance to do when they were younger. It's really true that everyone is a kid at heart.

The exhibits in Zeum are crazy. My favorites are definitely the Music Production Lab (MPL) and the Animators Studio. It's really fun watching all these different people sing together. I feel like I've learned so much about myself from this program. I hope that Zeum can expand to touch many more lives. In the Music Production Lab, it's really touching to see kids to come in shy but then by the time they're supposed to go up, they rock out and have a super fun time. It feels really awesome to be contributing to their experience here at Zeum, and I hope their time here is something they won't forget. At the MPL I've already made many memories with the visitors and with my peers. I love to sing, but I usually save that for when I'm at home or with my close friends. When I first became a ZeumMaster, I wasn't very comfortable on the stage but after a couple days, I love the stage and connecting with the visitors.

The Animators studio is so great because here the kids can make their own Claymation movie or go to another part of the exhibit and make a 2D or 3D animation. The visitors just love the studio and some stay for hours to perfect their clay characters and such. As a kid I didn't even know how animation was made but with this opportunity, the visitors have a chance to make movies like the ones they see on TV and the big screen. I love to just sit with the visitors and just listen to what story they've cooked up and the big plans they have for their animation. Their ideas are inspiring and they think so out of the box.

The smaller exhibits we have can also make a huge impact, like with our Lego and Colorform exhibit, I've seen some crazy things that visitors make and it really opens my eyes. How a Lego wall could be transformed into something completely different, it's really amazing. The visitors' personalities are displayed clearly through their artwork, and their stories.

The staff here is amazing and they couldn't be any greater. I love working at Zeum and I can't wait to make more memories here.

If you haven't been here, you're missing out!

-- Shelley [:

I Love Zeum!

Heyy everybody! I'm just going to blog about how much I enjoy Zeum =). I've been working here for about 5 months?? Well, it doesn't feel like work. It almost kind of feels like play time! I've learned more then I've expected to learn. From working with computers to working with kids and adults, there's a variety of new things to learn. I mean, every room you go into holds a whole new path of creativity and imagination! And, dude, there's alot of rooms to explore. When I help out the guests, not only do THEY experience new things, but I do too! For example, the questions each guest holds, the reactions to the experiences and fun they're having, ideas on how to improve what can be done, the things the kids create with their own i m a g i n a t i o n s , things that even I, can't think of.

My two favorite rooms right now are Music Production Lab (MPL) and Animators Studio. I'm liking MPL because I love m u s i c ! I find it pretty cool when I see and listen to kids, adults, and Zeum Masters singing. There are many different voices and songs out there. Sometimes, I even learn new songs while listening to everybody.

Animators Studio is another favorite because I used to love making art when I was little. I loved drawing and painting. I remember in kindergarten, the teacher would give us an option to play in the playgroud, or stay in the room and draw or create things ! Everybody would choose to go out, but I remember myself staying in the room playing with the crayons. Animators caught my eye when I first got here. I was like "Woahh this is cool!". I've made a couple things in Animators already. One I like the most is the sliced clay cake. Its in the display box! (The Pink Cake). I like this cake because I've seen kids go look at the cake, and then make a cake themselves ! Another cool thing was that the inside is all guts. So, when I sliced open the cake, it looked pretty cool!

Well, yeahhh today is my last day! Hopefully I'll be back in the summertime. kThnx For reading! =)