How do afterschool programs view their local public libraries? Are they working with them, and in what ways? These are the questions that the Afterschool Alliance, along with its partners at the Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) and the American Library Association, wanted to answer. Overall, our goal is to build bridges between the afterschool and library fields, so that both can share knowledge and resources to better serve our youth. While our work together has primarily focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education through
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington DC. It describes the CLUES project that provides STEM education opportunities to families.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
New Jersey Academy for Aquatic SciencesBarbara Kelly
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes My Sky Tonight, a project that introduces preschool-age children to astronomy.
This is a handout from the session "NASA in the Community: Diverse solutions to engaging families/educators" at the 2014 ASTC Conference held in Raleigh, NC. It includes presentation slides and related reference materials about NASA-funded informal education projects.
This is a handout from the session "Introducing your preschool audiences to science and astronomy" at the 2014 ASTC Conference held in Raleigh, NC. The session discussed how the My Sky Tonight project supports informal science educators in engaging young children in the practices of science through astronomy.
This catalog details the extent of NASA’s game portfolio, so that others developing new games are able to build upon the lessons learned from the past. Enclosed herein are details on fourteen individual games that have been created by or for NASA as well as two collections of hosted Flash games. Each entry has information about the game, including a screen shot, point of contact (if available), and a link to the game’s site. The games are identified by genre, NASA content or contribution, and intended audience or Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB) rating.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. The project seeks to understand the effects of interactive and immersive environments on the learning of science concepts in informal settings, specifically the role of embodied interactions and whether cueing students to physically enact critical ideas in physics will support middle school students' learning, engagement, and identification with science. This is done using an environment called MEteor, a simulation of planetary astronomy where students use their body to make predictions about how an asteroid will move through space.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a media project that created a documentary film about the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, as well as developing programming to be used both in the classroom and in diverse settings throughout the community.
These are the slides for part of the Diving Deeper, Looking Forward session "Building New Audiences with Technology" at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. James Harold from the Space Science Institute discusses the opportunities Facebook games as venues for informal learning, highlighting the development of the game "Starchitect."
This paper describes a framework for studying and evaluating learning environments which contextualize school science content within a larger real-world scientific endeavor, such as carrying on a space mission. A central feature of this framework is its incorporation of recent research on content-specific personal interest. This framework was developed and tested in a pilot evaluation of the Challenger Learning Center's M.A.R.S. (Mission Assignment: Relief and Supply) learning activity. This activity consists of a series of classroom activities which prepare students for a simulated Mars