Interactive Activities
Staff Contact: Gavin Luter
Museum Hours: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM Monday-Friday
Incorporated on Tour:
Decision-Making Stations: Four stations (Watergate, Environment, Iran Contra Affair, Panama Canal) that provide a series of primary documents, audio and visual clips to visitors; after viewing information, participants are able to cast their own vote on how they would have responded to such issues.
Hands-On Activities:
The “Make a Speech” station enables visitors to emulate figures such as President Kennedy or Senator Baker by reading famous speeches from a teleprompter.
The “Checks and Balances” station exemplifies the process a piece of legislation goes through to become a law by interacting in a game allowing students to act as policy makers.
Also, as the tour moves chronologically through time, visitors are able to see how voting was conducted at our nation’s birth, through the present, some of these “voting booths” allow visitors to cast their own votes for historic figures, or to write-in their own candidates.
Additional Activities:
View Primary Documents: The Baker Center is also home to the Modern Political Archives, which houses documents from a variety of Tennessee senators, representatives, governors, judges, etc. If you would like to have your class view documents from a specific period of time, or from a specific political figure, contact Bobby Holt (bholt7@utk.edu).
Humpty Dumpty and Public Policy: This activity takes a common nursery rhyme and applies it to public policy, by having participants analyze why Humpty fell off the wall (poor infrastructure?), etc. Visitors then have to work together to develop effective policies to prevent the tragedy that befell Humpty from occurring again.
Civic Engagement: Visitors are provided with a survey that helps them to analyze how they view the many facets of public policy and public service, and which initiatives are most important to them.
Scavenger Hunt: See “Prepared Lesson Plans; ” these scavenger hunts take visitors on a more specific and interactive tour through the museum, in which they will look for certain facts, be asked to evaluate certain concepts, etc.
Upcoming Events
- Tapping into Water
- Tapping into Water
- Tapping into Water
- Tapping into Water
Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010
Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010
Opportunities@BakerCenter
Contact Senator Baker
Honorable Howard H. Baker, Jr.
P.O. Box 600
Huntsville, TN 37756
423-663-9148
hbaker@bakerdonelson.com
