News

Mount St. Helens observatory using kiosks as teaching tools

May 10, 2011

Visitors to Mount St. Helens will receive a plethora of information as they take in volcano views.

According to The Daily News Online, when the Johnston Ridge Observatory in Toutle, Wash. opens for the season on Saturday, its displays will include new movies and touch-screen kiosks that will also be installed elsewhere around the peak as part of $1.6 million worth of improvements and enhancements.

Representatives of the U.S. Forest Service and the nonprofit Mount St. Helens Institute are very excited about the touch-screen "Return to Life" kiosk loaded with hundreds of photos and videos. Visitors can touch on a location on the main screen to access a science lesson from a Mount St. Helens expert.

"We're trying to bring the three decades of biology research to the exhibits," Peter Frenzen, a scientist employed by the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, said in the story.

The Forest Service filmed researchers who gathered at the peak last summer to mark the 30th anniversary of the volcano's most recent major eruption in 1980.

According to the story, three of the kiosks will be stationed at the JRO, one at the Pine Creek Information Center south of the volcano and one at Monument headquarters in Amboy. The kiosk at the History Museum will stay there for a few months before being relocated at the Cascades Observatory on Road 99, which is currently snowed in.

Eventually, kiosk content will be added to the Institute's website, from which some of it might be transferable to smart phones, Frenzen said in the story.