TNT: National Liberty Museum launches interactive touchscreen exhibit

It’s probably not often that you consider how you learned basic values that shaped your moral views in life. But the folks at the National Liberty Museum think about it constantly and believe that a lot of it has to do with believing in heroes. Likewise, they believe that Old City – where the museum is based – isn’t a bad place to begin those lessons. After all, museum executives say, it was there, 234 years ago, that many brave Americans signed a document that began one of the most important moral battles in world history. Today, the museum is focused on educating folks, especially children, with those lessons in mind, and earlier this month it announced a new exhibit that uses technology to do just that. It’s new interactive “Heroes of Character” exhibit teaches basic character development, the small things that seem perhaps basic for adults, but help shape children’s positive character traits; values like thrift, education, honoring diversity and admirably solving conflicts. “Standing up for what is right,” is how museum Vice President, Programs Kevin Orangers described it to Technically Philly during a visit last week on Martin Luther King Day. At the modest exhibit, children are challenged by touchscreen-controlled games that test their moral values, like asking, for example, what they should do when they encounter a bully. There’s no right or wrong answers. Instead, the games tie in how historical figures like Martin Luther King, Ben Franklin and Anne Frank handled obstacles in their lives. A Web cam even takes photos of the children with their favorite historical figures that can be later downloaded on the Heroes of Character companion Web site. The interactive exhibit, designed by Media, Pennsylvania-based production company Allied Pixel, formerly Haley Productions, is a first of its kind for the museum, which funded the project with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The exhibit is setup identically on the first-floor and third-floor, after executives vetted that it would be popular among kids. As families with young children trickled in to the Old City museum throughout our early-afternoon visit last week, the new exhibit’s emphasis seemed fitting. And though each game’s art is sharp and imaginative, we couldn’t help but feel unimpressed by the exhibit’s drab physical presentation, pictured above. Maybe we were missing the point: Perhaps it’s what’s on the inside that counts.