Child Trends is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the lives of children and their families by conducting research and sharing the resulting knowledge with practitioners and the public. In this project, Child Trends will conduct research and development to launch a Child Trends News Service aimed at providing news reports that feature social science child-centric research. The resulting work is designed to improve outcomes for at-risk children, particularly Latinos, the largest and fastest-growing minority group among U.S. children. Working with a professional news syndication company, the Child Trends News Service will produce engaging reports for key news media outlets that feature the latest actionable social science research related to behaviors that help mitigate negative child outcomes associated with poverty, lack of education, violence, among other challenges. Child Trends will draw attention to the reports through social media and outreach to stakeholders. By airing these reports on local television news programs in English and Spanish, millions of people will have greater access to this information. This is early R&D work to demonstrate that local television stations will air these stories and to examine the audience impact—how does accessing this social science research through preferred media channels influence news audiences’ knowledge and attitudes toward specific social science research? The study will also delve deeper to better understand how news might, or might not, motivate behavioral change. The study will provide valuable lessons to the informal science education and the STEM communication science field.
The overarching aim of this project is to use commercial news to reach populations, especially Latinos, who have historically been underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and careers. The goals of the project are to:
* Leverage mass media news outlets to effectively communicate developments in social science research on child well-being and development to Latino audiences.
* Advance the field of informal STEM learning by exploring how the public interacts with actionable social science child research.
* Expand the reach and application of the news products through strategic collaborations with provider organizations serving at-risk Latino families; the child research and STEM fields; and other organizations working on Latino family issues.
Activities include the development and formative testing of the news service, the qualitative and quantitative testing of the news service's impact on audiences, and evaluation of the implementation of the project's components. The quantitative research, using a control group and treatment group, will work to establish preliminary evidence that the Child Trends News Service will result in changes in viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and intent to adopt behaviors related to child-centric social science research. The Child Trends' project team will be informed by an Advisory Board and Technical Working Group as well by working closely with Abriendo Puertas, the largest U.S. parenting education program for low-income Latino parents. Child Trends will partner with Ivanhoe Broadcast News to produce and distribute the materials. Group I&I Consultancy will evaluate the project. In year-two, Child Trends will produce a research brief on lessons learned and research outcome measures. The proposed research and development will be conducted over a two-year period; findings will inform ongoing service and additional research.
This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
Soundprint Media Center, Inc. and RLPaul Productions, produced a cross-media package that includes a website (capecosmos.org), radio programs, and museum-based family events related to the 50th anniversary of the Space Program. The project, Out of This World (OOTW), is a program that sought to stimulate interest in science by presenting the little known stories of African-Americans and women who contributed to the U.S. Space program, and to provide historical context for the scope and reach of the nascent aerospace science program. Through radio documentaries and collaborations with science centers and museums, including the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), OOTW broke new ground in developing an integrated media project that reached different audiences. The deliverables included: three radio documentaries (; an educational DVD package with 20 video mini-documentaries, curator interviews with space research pioneers and a learning guide; an interactive website that recreates a space mission circa 1961, and a series of live two-way video conferences between NASM and some 14 partner museums and science centers. OOTW used the power of investigative journalism and the reach of public radio and local science museums to connect with adults and school-age children, to cut across demographic categories, and to include a significant number of minority and at-risk children.
Cracking the Maya Code is a one-hour PBS/NOVA adaptation of the two-hour feature documentary Breaking the Maya Code, based on the book of the same title by Michael D. Coe. Major funding for the project - which included website, eduational and outreach components - was provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Knight Williams Research conducted a summative evaluation of Cracking the Maya Code. The evaluation examined the appeal, clarity, and educational impact of the program, focusing on educating Viewers about: The basic principles that underlie
Unicorn Projects, Inc. is producing a project about historic mills in American and the science and technology of their operation. The project will combine a nationally broadcast one-hour PBS special with print and interactive educational materials for the home and school markets along with family-oriented personal appearance by host-author David Macaulay at selected museum and mill sites across the country. The goal of the project is to acquaint viewers and participants with the technological innovations and the scientific, social and historical significance of water-powered mills in the early part of the industrial revolution. In addition to the television program the project will produce Mill Times newspapers applicable in formal as well as informal settings, curriculum-based school videos and teachers guides, activity kits including "toys" designed to introduce concepts in applied mechanics, and family-activity programs at selected sites. The PI and Producer/Director will be Larry Klein who has produced and directed the previous Macaulay programs among many other PBS specials. David Macaulay, author of many best-selling books on architecture and technology, will be the host and will work closely with Mark Olshaker, the writer, in developing the script for the program. The Education Director will be Toby Levine. The principal technology and history advisor will be Patrick Malone, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and American Civilization at Brown University and past president of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. The science advisor will be Theodore Ansbacher, principal of Science Services, an informal science education consulting company. Other advisors include Robert Dalzell, Gary Kulik, Judith McGaw, and Merrit Roe Smith.
WGBH Educational Foundation is producing a four-hour documentary special, "Fire," to be broadcast as a NOVA special. The series will present the story of fire as an important but often overlooked key to understanding the natural world and our shared environmental history. Humans have used fire in virtually every aspect of our existence: for heat and light, as a tool and a source of power, for the private rituals of spiritual life and the monumental reshaping of entire landscapes. Fire acts as a significant agent of change in our world today, and the interaction of fire and humans is now acknowledged as a significant part of global climate change research and of biodiversity and ecosystem health studies. Fire will examine these and other powerful and fundamental scientific questions related to fire being explored today. The project will integrate fire history with an understanding of the scientific principles of fire chemistry and behavior, and it will link that knowledge with ecology, agriculture, forestry and resource management. An integrated outreach campaign will accompany the television series. It will be built around a resource kit, offered in both print and CD-ROM formats, with activities and other resources for families and youth organizations at the late elementary and early middle school level. There also will be special web pages within NOVA's award-winning web site that will include the "Fire" resource kit materials. The PI and Series Producer will be Judith Vecchione whose credits include the NSF-supported series on women scientists today, "Discovering Women." Paula Apsell, Executive Producer for NOVA, will be Executive-in-Charge. The Film Director will be Kirk Wolfinger whose prior NOVA productions include "Submarine!," "Titanic's Lost Sister," "Daredevils of the Sky," and "To the Moon." The Series Senior Advisor is Stephen J. Pyne, Professor of History at Arizona State University. Dr. Pyne is an environmental historian and author of the five-book "Cycle of Fire" suite. Other advisors include: Norman L. Christensen, Dean of the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University; Johann Georg Goldammer, Senior Scientist and leader of the Fire Ecology and Biomass Burning Research Groups of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry; Robert Huggins, Servicewide Education Coordinator for the National Park Service; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; Marcella Russell, Regional Liaison for the Massachusetts Parent Involvement Project; and Brian Stocks, Senior Fire Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service.
WGBH is producing four, two-hour programs on the lives of scientists. These programs will be the initial programs in a continuing series of television portraits of distinguished scientists to be broadcast as regular features in the prime-time science series NOVA. The scientists to be covered in the first four programs are Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, and Percy Julian. By illuminating the lives and scientific careers of these important figures, the programs will enhance public understanding of such basic scientific concepts as evolution, the solar system, the chemical bond and the structure of the atom. Ultimately, the programs will give viewers a new perspective on the process of scientific discovery. Ancillary educational support for the programs will include enhanced content on the web site at NOVA Online and classroom support material in the NOVA Teacher's Guide that is mailed to 60,000 teachers nationwide. WGBH also has formed an outreach partnership with the American Library Association to create informal educational resources for use by families, youths, and adults. The core of this special outreach plan is a set of Library Resource Kits that will be available to all 16,000 public libraries. Paula Apsell, Executive Producer for NOVA, will serve as PI for the project. Members of the advisory committee include: Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, MIT; Kenneth R. Manning, Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and of the History of Science, MIT; Noami Oreskes, Associate Professor of History, University of California, San Diego; Daniel I. Rubenstein, Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University; and Neil D. Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium.