The Museum of Science, Boston partnered with Goddard Space Flight Center and Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium to develop educational resources around aeronautical and aerospace engineering. The main goals of the project were to increase the awareness of engineering work done during NASA missions, to engage children in the Engineering Design Process (EDP), and to support educators developing engineering-focused curricula. The study evaluated three main deliverables: 1) A planetarium program featuring NASA’s robotic missions of discovery, 2) A summer teacher workshop designed for middle
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed to engage teens and educators with authentic data, scientific games, tools, and opportunities to communicate with and assist working scientists. The present study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the fourth NOVA Labs platform developed: RNA Lab. The RNA Lab includes several key components of the previous labs (e.g., videos, educator guides, etc.). The major difference is that the RNA Lab “research challenge” is a game component. The NOVA Education team's overarching goals for teens using the Lab focused
Tornado Alley is a giant screen adventure that follows renegade filmmaker Sean Casey and the scientists of VORTEX2, the largest tornado research project ever assembled, on their epic missions to encounter one of Earth’s most awe-inspiring events: the birth of a tornado. Program components included the giant screen film; a Web site; educators’ guides and resources for classroom and informal learning; and professional development sessions utilizing cyberinfrastructure to facilitate remote interactions between educators and researchers performing actual data manipulations. In addition, an
Rockman et al (REA), in partnership with Marti Louw and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE) conducted a summative evaluation in Summer 2014 of an aquatic macroinvertebrate digital teaching collection (macroinvertebrates.org) containing voucher specimens from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) in Pittsburgh, PA. The digital teaching collection groups three orders of aquatic insects (stoneflies, caddisflies, and mayflies), and users can click on a specific insect and get information on its genus, habitat, behaviors, size, abundance
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University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School-Environments (UPCLOSE)Camellia Sanford-Dolly
Overview of Sustainability Professional Development and Evaluation: As part of the National Science Foundation funded "Sustainability: Promoting Sustainable Decision Making in Informal Education" project, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and its partners developed a professional development website and workshop. The goal of this and other project deliverables was to promote sustainable decision making by building skills that allow participants to weigh their choices and choose more sustainable practices. ExhibitSEED (Exhibit Social Environmental and Economic Development) refers
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Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryRenee B. Curtis