The Maryland Science Center (MSC), in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), and Morgan State University (MSU), has sought the support of the National Institutes of Health SEPA (Science Education Partnership Award) Program to develop "Cellular Universe: The Promise of Stem Cells," a unique exhibition and update center with related programs that highlight the most current science in cell biology and stem cell research. Visitor surveys have shown that science museum visitors are very interested in learning about stem cell research, but know little about the science of stem cells or cell biology, which form the basis of stem cell research. The goal of this project is to help visitors learn about advances in cell biology and stem cells so that they will make informed health-related decisions, explore new career options, and better understand the role of basic and clinical research in health advances that affect people's lives. Topics to be covered include the basic biology of cells, the role of stem cells in human development, current stem cell research and the clinical research process. This exhibition will also address the controversies in stem cell research. Our varied advisory panel, including cell biologists, physiologists, adult and embryonic stem cell researchers and bioethicists, will ensure the objectivity of all content. "Cellular Universe: The Promise of Stem Cells" will be a 3,500 square-foot exhibition to be planned, designed and prototyped in Fall 2006-Winter 2009, and installed in MSC's second-floor human body exhibition hall in Spring 2009. This exhibition will build on the successful model of "BodyLink," our innovative health science update center funded by a 2000 SEPA grant (R25RR015602) and supported by partnerships with JHU and UMB.
The Earth and Sky radio series proposes to produce, distribute, market and evaluate 72 compelling environmental radio programs on oceanic and atmospheric topics featuring NOAA scientists, data and information. These programs will air at a rate of 24 programs per year over a three-year period as part of Earth and Sky's regularly scheduled programming to its many affiliates. Earth and Sky will feature this new radio programming on our web site. The programs will be available in both text and a variety of audio formats including downloadable mp3 files, streaming m3u files, and will be available for podcast. The web site will also feature additional information that augments and supports the content of the radio programs, including links to relevant information, encouraging web visitors to delve deeper into a topic area and learn more. Project Learning Tree (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program designed for teachers and other educators, parents, and community leaders working with youth from preschool through grade 12. PLT will correlate their vast catalogue of existing environmental education curricula to each show. Correlations for each program will be listed next to that show in the dedicated PLT section of Earth and Sky's website.
The Bishop Museum will develop, implement and evaluate of a full set of informal education programs centered on the Science On a Sphere exhibit. This project includes the following programs and exhibits: -Eleven classroom modules on earth and ocean sciences (one module for each grade from kindergarten through 10th) using a field trip to the Science On a Sphere (SOS) and the new Science Adventure Center at Bishop Museum as the keystone for each module. - Exhibits in the planetarium lobby that will augment the SOS display by providing additional content information, local tie-ins, and information on how SOS works. - Daily live demonstrations at the sphere. This includes public demonstrations (1200 shows, 22,000 attendees during the grant period) and school children (400 shows, 9600 attendees during the grant period) for a total attendance of 31,600. -Yearly teacher workshops (2 total, 80 educators) to promote the use of the classroom modules mentioned above with NOAA staff and museum staff. Special-event programming incorporating the sphere will also include an eight-session lecture series featuring NOAA staff; two annual "Mad About Science" Festivals; eight Family Sunday events; and twenty local television news and weather broadcasts using the sphere and its programs for content and background.
ITR: A Networked, Media-Rich Programming Environment to Enhance Informal Learning and Technological Fluency at Community Technology Centers The MIT Media Laboratory and UCLA propose to develop and study a new networked, media-rich programming environment, designed specifically to enhance the development of technological fluency at after-school centers in economically disadvantaged communities. This new programming environment (to be called Scratch) will be grounded in the practices and social dynamics of Computer Clubhouses, a network of after-school centers where youth (ages 10-18) from low-income communities learn to express themselves with new technologies. We will study how Clubhouse youth (ages 10-18) learn to use Scratch to design and program new types of digital-arts projects, such as sensor-controlled music compositions, special-effects videos created with programmable image-processing filters, robotic puppets with embedded controllers, and animated characters that youth trade wirelessly via handheld devices. Scratch's networking infrastructure, coupled with its multilingual capabilities, will enable youth to share their digital-arts creations with other youth across geographic, language, and cultural boundaries. This research will advance understanding of the effective and innovative design of new technologies to enhance learning in after-school centers and other informal-education settings, and it will broaden opportunities for youth from under-represented groups to become designers and inventors with new technologies. We will iteratively develop our technologies based on ongoing interaction with youth and staff at Computer Clubhouses. The use of Scratch at Computer Clubhouses will serve as a model for other after-school centers in economically-disadvantaged communities, demonstrating how informal-learning settings can support the development of technological fluency, enabling young people to design and program projects that are meaningful to themselves and their communities.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickJohn MaedaYasmin Kafai
The "Mentored Youth Building Employable Skills in Technology (MyBEST)" project, a collaboration of the Youth Science Center (YSC) and Learning Technology Center (LTC) at the Science Museum of Minnesota, is a three-year, youth-based proposal that seeks to engage 200 inner-city youngsters in learning experiences involving information and design technologies. The goal of the project is to develop participants' IT fluency coupled with work- and academic-related skills. The program will serve students in grades 7 through 12 with special emphasis on three underrepresented groups: girls, youngsters of color, and the economically disadvantaged. Project participants will receive 130 contact hours and 70% will receive at least 160 hours. Each project year, including summers, students participate in three seasons consisting of five two-week cycles. Project activities will center on an annual technology theme: design, engineering and invention; social and environmental systems; and networks and communication. The activities that constitute project seasons include guest presenter workshops; open labs facilitated by guest presenters, mentors and adult staff; presentations of student projects; career workshops and field trips. The project cycles feature programming (e.g., Logo computer language; Cricketalk), engineering and multi-media production (e.g., digital video; non-linear editing software). Each cycle will interface with an existing museum-related program (e.g., the NSF-funded traveling Cyborg exhibit). Mentors will work alongside participants in all technology-based activities. These mentors will be recruited from university, business, community partners and participant families. Leadership development is addressed through teamwork and in the form of internships and externships. Participants obtain work experience related to technology in the internship and externship component. The "MyBEST" project will serve as a prototype for the Museum to test the introduction of technology as central to the design and learning outcomes of its youth-based programs. An advisory board reflecting expertise in youth development, technology and informal science education will guide the program's development and plans for sustainability. Core elements of the "MyBEST" program will be integrated into the Museum's youth-based projects sponsored by the YSC and LTC departments. The Museum has a strong record of integrating prototype initiatives into long-standing programs.
In this chapter we want to examine the reality behind these labels by examining the place of emergent technologies in the lives of young people. In doing so, we review and synthesize some of the key research in this area, highlighting the principal topics and potential issues of interest for future study. Although much has been published in the popular media, until fairly recently relatively little had been written from a more scholarly perspective. The overview we offer here is based on a wide range of academic research dispersed through a variety of disciplines including geography, sociology
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan McKayCrispin ThurlowHeather Zimmerman
Afterschool and community science programs have become widely recognized as important sanctuaries for science learning for low-income urban youth and as offering them with "missing opportunities." Yet, more needs to be known about how youth, themselves, perceive such opportunities. What motivates youth to seek out such opportunities in the nonschool hours? How do youth describe the doing and talking of science in such programs? Given such descriptions, how do youth perceive the role of these programs in their lives? This paper relies on stories from three youth drawn from a multisited
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jrene RahmMarie-Paule Martel-RenyJohn Moore
This paper focuses on an early stage of developing curricular materials to support students' learning of scientific inquiry. The materials being developed and tested, called Classroom FeederWatch (CFW), aimed to support science inquiry and were developed by a collaborative team of private curriculum developers and scientists (ornithologists). Inquiry dimensions were influenced at the outset by the newly released National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996) and by prior successful experiences of ornithologists with inquiry
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Deborah TrumbullRick BonneyNancy Grudens-Schuck
Museums are favorite and respected resources for learning worldwide. In Israel, there are two relatively large science centers and a number of small natural history museums that are visited by thousands of students. Unlike other countries, studying museum visits in Israel only emerges in the last few years. The study focused on the roles and perceptions of teachers, who visited four natural history museums with their classes. The study followed previous studies that aimed at understanding the role teachers play in class visits to museums (Griffin & Symington, 1997, Science Education, 81, 763
This article describes the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that employs a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9–12, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users at participating elementary schools and after-school centers to travel through virtual spaces to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. Our work has involved an agenda and process that may be called socially
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sasha BarabMichael ThomasTyler DodgeRobert CarteauxHakan Tuzun
Design-based research is a collection of innovative methodological approaches that involve the building of theoretically-inspired designs to systematically generate and test theory in naturalistic settings. Design-based research is especially powerful with respect to supporting and systematically examining innovation. In part, this is due to the fact that conducting design-based research involves more than examining what is. It also involves designing possibilities and then evolving theories within real-world contexts. In this article we share the historical development of three outcomes of
Free-choice learning and, derivatively, free-choice environmental learning emerges as a powerful vehicle for supporting diversity in learning styles (Falk & Dierking, 2002). In this article, I argue that free-choice environmental learning holds great potential for enabling us to understand what is at stake in environmental learning and thus help us build a sustainable future. I examine the different informal learning contexts for children, home (family and play), museums, zoos, nature parks and wilderness, among many others, and offer an explanation for how learning occurs in these settings