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resource project Media and Technology
The ScienceMakers: African Americans and Scientific Innovation is a three-year project designed to increase awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, raise awareness of STEM careers, and increase understanding of STEM concepts through the creation of education, media, and career resources. The project team is supplemented with an extensive advisory board of STEM education, museum, and community professionals, as well as representatives from partnering science centers. Project partners include the St. Louis Science Center, Liberty Science Center, New York Hall of Science, Pacific Science Center, Franklin Institute, COSI Columbus, Lawrence Hall of Science, SciWorks, Detroit Science Center, and MOSI Chicago. Additional collaborators include middle and high schools with high minority populations. Project deliverables include a fully accessible multi-media archive of video oral histories of 180 African American scientists and web resources and contests utilizing Web 2.0 and 3.0 applications such as social networking tools that foster engagement and build community around the ScienceMakers. Public programs for youth and adults at science museums, after-school programs, and community organizations highlight African American contributors, and encourage interest in science and science careers and the ScienceMakers DVD Toolkit expand the reach of this innovative project. Intended impacts for youth and adults consist of increased awareness of STEM concepts and career options, exposure to African American scientists, awareness of the contributions of minority scientists, and 21st century skills. Intended impacts on professional audiences include increased awareness and understanding of STEM careers and workforce diversity, 21st century skills, and STEM career options. The project evaluation, conducted by Knight-Williams Research Communications, utilizes a mixed-methods approach. The evaluation assesses the impact of the oral history archive, public programs, and other deliverables on public and professional audiences' knowledge, interest, and awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, STEM concepts, and STEM careers. The evaluation also includes an ethnography which examines factors that contribute to success in STEM careers by African-American scientists. The ScienceMakers significantly expands the world\'s largest searchable oral history archive and may have an enduring impact on research and practice in the field of informal science education. The project has the potential to enrich programs and exhibits, while raising awareness of the contributions of African-American scientists among informal science education professionals and the general public.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Julieanna Richardson Alison Bruzek
resource project Media and Technology
The Science Museum of Minnesota, in collaboration with six NSF-funded Science and Technology Centers (STCs) around the country, is developing several deliverables around the theme of the Anthropocene; that is, the idea that Earth has entered a new geologic epoch in which humanity is the dominant agent of global change. Deliverables include: (1) a 3,500 square-foot exhibit with object theater at the museum; (2) an Earth Buzz Web site that focuses on global change topics equivalent in design intent to the museum's popular current science Science Buzz website; (3) kiosks with Earth Buzz experiences installed in selected public venues; (4) Public programs with decision makers and opinion leaders on the implications of a human-dominated planet; and (5) youth programs and activities that engage them with the exhibit, web site, and careers in STEM. The exhibits and Web site will feature scientific visualizations and computational models adapted to public learning environments from research work being conducted by STCs and other academic research partners. First-person narrative videos of scientists and their research produced by Twin Cities Public Television now are on display in the Future Earth exhibit and also have been packaged into a half-hour program for broadcast statewide. The intended strategic impact on the field of informal STEM education is twofold: (1) explore how to accelerate the dissemination of scientific research to public audiences; (2) investigate ways science centers/museums can serve as forums for public policy dialogues.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Patrick Hamilton Robert Garfinkle Paul Morin
resource project Media and Technology
Future Space is an educational but fun pair of planetarium programs, targeted at middle school students and then general public, to show that NASA is still in the space business! The lead institution is the Louisiana Art and Science Museum with lead production at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and science and program review through Rice University. The program has produced one excellent planetarium show "We Choose Space!" which covers the history of the space program including building the International Space Station (ISS), and actual images from our fisheye lens inside the ISS. It has been licensed to over a dozen theaters around the world and is also available for free viewing through YouTube, with a free downloadable Educator Guide. It has been translated into Spanish, Hindi, and Teluga and is being translated into Turkish. A second show "The Gravity Factor", which discusses how humans might in the future visit and exploit the planets, is being completed now. It uses surface gravity as a common theme. A dome cover was created to represent the ISS Cupola from the outside.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Carol Gikas John Elvert
resource project Exhibitions
Stroud Water Research Center (SWRC) will partner with Longwood Gardens (LG) to develop educational materials that help visitors understand the links between the hydrologic and carbon cycles. The goal is to demonstrate how landscape aesthetics can influence land-use decisions, and to offer carbon-neutral methods the public and others can employ to reduce the impact of storm runoff. The intended audience is primarily adults among the 800,000 annual visitors to the Gardens who are landowners as well as professionals such as engineers, regional planners, landscape architects, developers and municipal officials. This project will also communicate research to public audiences through SWRC and LG websites.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Louis Kaplan J. Denis Newbold Susan Gill Anthony Aufdenkampe
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Board on Science Education (BOSE) of the NRC is a standing committee of the National Academies. This proposal requests core support for BOSE so that it can continue to provide national leadership in science education. Specifically, BOSE (1) improves the knowledge base for science education; (2) identifies critical issues in science education policy and practice; (3) translates research and disseminates evidence-based information; and (4) builds an interdisciplinary community of scholars to bring knowledge to bear on important issues in science education. To carry out its mandate, BOSE conducts studies, sponsors workshop and works with government representatives to surface emerging policy issues. The Board has identified the following priorities for the next few years: intersection on research on learning and science education, cyber-enabled learning and teaching, analysis of the Education System to enable implementation and scale-up, reaching diverse populations, intersection of science and science education The core support enables two two-day Board meetings each year, coordination with DBASSE and other units of the Academy, and regular meetings between NSF and the Academies.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Martin Storksdieck Heidi Schweingruber
resource project Exhibitions
This project comprises the NSF-funded portion of the renovation of a 25,000 sq. ft. natural history gallery called "CHANGING CALIFORNIA." ORIGINAL PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) will develop, implement, and evaluate Hotspot California, a research-based natural science gallery transformation that will explore the educational potential of wildlife dioramas to engage the public in urgent environmental issues. The exhibition will showcase five real places in California that exemplify high biological diversity and complex environmental issues. Innovative approaches to interpretation will emphasize personal connections to these places and infuse static dioramas with visualization technologies that illustrate environmental change over time. The project will explore how such enhancements to dioramas might help visitors develop place-based connections to the natural world. The project has four major deliverables: 1) an innovative 25,000 sq ft gallery exhibition installation featuring five specific California places where California's unique biodiversity is threatened; 2) an application and evaluation of a new participatory exhibit design model involving community contribution, collaboration, and co-design; 3) a two-day "synthesis symposium" for informal science education professionals to consider broad applications of project findings for the field; and 4) "Diorama Dilemmas: A Source book for Museums," synthesizing relevant literature, case studies, and findings from the project's research and evaluation generalizable to the field. The project has evolved since the NSF award, but it remains aligned with its original goals. The team increased the number of California places from five to seven and worked to add a strong human presence within a gallery previously devoted almost entirely to other species. Innovative reuse of OMCA's dioramas and habitat cases continues to be the project's core, but the team's approach has emphasized re-contextualizing rather than revising those exhibits. New elements include iconic artifacts and environments reflecting recent human impact on California, relevant objects from OMCA's art and history collections, digital visualizations of dynamic natural phenomena, and spaces for hands-on investigation. Community focused elements include multiple co-created exhibits and media programs offering inspiring encounters with Californians deeply involved in these seven places.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Lori Fogarty Don Pohlman Douglas Long Mary Jo Sutton Kathleen McLean Cecilia Garibay Beverly Serrell
resource project Media and Technology
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will partner with the City of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development, Metro Regional Government, Portland Community College, Verde, and the Coalition for a Livable Future, to create a series of informal science education experiences on the theme of Sustainability. For this project, sustainability is defined in terms of a triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental needs. The project responds to calls for broad environmental education of the public in response to environmental crises (such as climate change), and specific research suggesting that even museums that do provide information about such issues rarely help their visitors learn to make the comparisons necessary to make more sustainable choices. For the public audience, the project team will create a 1,500 sq. ft. bilingual (Spanish/English) exhibition to encourage the public to develop skills in making personal choices that affect the sustainability of their community. They will also create 25-40 bilingual cell phone tags that will provide listeners who dial the phone numbers with information, personal perspectives, current STEM research, invitations to contribute ideas or vote on issues, interactive phone-based activities, and links to websites, all in service of helping them make intentional and informed personal decisions on sustainability. The cell phone tags will be located at approximately 100 locations in the Portland area, including predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, public transit locations, public works, and community projects. The team will also create a bilingual website and will offer quarterly bilingual events at the museum on the topic of sustainable living. For the professional audience, the team will create a set of tools and indicators for assessing the sustainability of exhibit-development processes, using the triple bottom line of financial, environmental, and social impacts. For example, a Green Exhibit Guide will provide resources and a checklist for exhibit development projects, and will propose field-wide standards analogous to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings. Regional workshops will engage exhibit developers, designers, fabricators, and administrators in using the tools in their own institutions. The project will create a coordinated set of resources to inform the public about the science of sustainability and to engage them in making informed choices in their daily lives, both in the museum and beyond. The topic of sustainability is timely and important, and the use of cell phones as a mobile technology linked to web resources and an exhibition constitute an innovative synergy of media to create impacts on a city-wide scale. The project serves underrepresented Hispanic audiences through its creation of bilingual materials, placement of cell phone tags, and community involvement in the development process. Finally, the project advances the ISE field in proposing and broadly disseminating a set of standards for green exhibit design, along with developing resources and tools for assessing sustainability. Created in collaboration with other organizations, this work has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of museums while providing highly visible examples of sustainable practices for visitors.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Raymond Vandiver Marilyn Johnson Victoria Coats Shanna Eller Renée Curtis
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Arizona State University is conducting a May 2010 two-day workshop that will bring together "Next Generation" (NextGen) science communicators (writers, journalists, bloggers, documentary filmmakers, museum professionals); NextGen scholars/researchers in science and technology policy; and publication editors. The goals are: to help improve the communications skills of these professionals, to encourage collaborations of communicators and scholars, and, ultimately, to help the public gain a better understanding of the policy dimensions of STEM by encouraging more effective communications about STEM and policy issues that affect their lives. The workshop provides direct experience in a writing genre called "narrative nonfiction" or "creative nonfiction," a domain in which Gutkind has been a leader. The co-PI, Guston, is a scholar in science and technology policy and an active partner of the NSF-funded Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network. In addition, the Spring 2011 issue of Issues in Science and Technology will include works by the collaborating communicators/scholars. This workshop precedes and informs a larger conference on science policy, The Rightful Place of Science?," funded by others, including NSF's Science, Technology, and Society program.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Lee Gutkind David Guston
resource project Media and Technology
"Genes to Ecosystems" is a Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) proposal based upon the Dr. Thomas Whitham's NSF funded research (#0425908 "Frontiers in Integrative Biological Research (FBIR): Ecological Genomics and Heritability: Consequences of Extended Phenotypes"). "Genes to Ecosystems" has two main educational objectives: to introduce a wide sector of the public to new ways of looking at ecosystems, and to show how science happens, with practical outcomes that are meaningful to the public. The CRPA request will support the production of a one-hour documentary film, podcasts, a stand-alone DVD, and radio segments for "Earth Notes." These deliverables are targeted to informal learners and public television viewers in the western United States. The documentary will follow a research project begun in 1982 which demonstrates how genetic variation within a foundation species--in this case cottonwood trees--impacts community members ranging from microbes to mega-fauna. The concept of genes-to-ecosystems has introduced new ways of understanding ecosystems which have practical implications for conserving biodiversity, ecological restoration, coping with climate change, and other public policy issues. The project will be managed by the PI, Dr. Thomas Whitham, and co-PI, Daniel Boone, both at Northern Arizona University.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Thomas Whitham Daniel Boone
resource project Media and Technology
Video games have been heralded as models of technology-enhanced learning environments as they exemplify many of the ideas emerging from contemporary learning sciences research. In particular, such games promote learning through goal-directed action in simulated environments, through producing as well as consuming information, embedded assessments, and through participation in self-organizing learning systems. Research suggests that participation in such environments involves many forms of scientific thinking and may lead to increased civic engagement, although to date, there are few examples of game-based learning environments that capitalize on these affordances. This project will investigate the potential of online role playing games for scientific literacy through the iterative design and research of Saving Lake Wingra, an online role playing game around a controversial development project in an urban area. Saving Lake Wingra positions players as ecologists, department of natural resources officials, or journalists investigating a rash of health problems at a local lake, and then creating and debating solutions. Players will solve challenges within an interactive, simulated lake ecosystem as they attempt to save the lake, working for one of several constituencies. This design-based research project will span the full life cycle of a project, from case studies of learning in small, constrained settings to controlled experimental studies of games implemented across classrooms. In addition to asking if participation in scientific role-playing games can produce robust conceptual understandings, it will also examine if role playing games might serve as assessment tools for comprehending scientific texts, assessing conceptual understandings within scientific domains, and designing innovative solutions to environmental problems that draw upon scientific understandings. The education plan includes the production of game-based media that can be used to support a variety of research studies, an online professional development community of educators using games for learning, support for graduate students trained in game theory, the learning sciences, and new forms of assessment, and new courses in game-based learning and assessment.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Kurt Squire
resource project Media and Technology
The University of Central Florida Media Convergence Laboratory, New York Hall of Science, and the Queens Museum of Art are developing a 3-D, multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) of the 1964/65 New York World's Fair. Virtual fairgoers of all ages will be immersed in an accurately modeled historical world with more than 140 pavilions on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and an array arts and humanities exhibits. The virtual world can be freely explored through self-designed avatars, and avatar-led guided tours. Discovery Points throughout the virtual environment will afford opportunities for in-depth engagement in STEM topics that will empower participants to explore the broader consequences of technological innovations. The centerpiece of user-generated content is FutureFair, an area where online users can create and share their personal visions of the future. Interconnections reaches beyond its virtual component through its partnership with the New York Hall of Science and the Queens Museum of Art, which are both situated in the heart of Queens in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a 1255 acre urban park that hosted the 1939/1940 and 1964/65 Fairs. The New York Hall of Science will provide face-to-face youth workshops that employ problem-based learning. Single and multi-session programs will connect adolescents to STEM content presented at the Fair through the virtual world environment. Participants will create multimedia content for inclusion in the project's website. Multi-touch interactive stations at the Queens Museum of Art will enhance their NY World's Fair Exhibit Hall by empowering visitors to individually or collectively explore various STEM topics and the symbiotic relationships between STEM and the humanities, and by serving as an attractor for visitors to the online Fair exploration. The project will be completed in time for the 50th Anniversary celebration of the 1964 World's Fair. Building upon prior research on learning in virtual worlds, the project team will investigate how STEM concepts are advanced in a simulated multi-user virtual environment and studying the effectiveness of using Virtual Docents as enhancements to the informal learning process. The research and development deliverables have strong potential to advance the state of informal science education, research on modeling and simulation in virtual world development, and education research. Michigan Technological University will conduct the project formative and summative evaluations.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Lori Walters Michael Moshell Charles Hughes Eileen Smith
resource project Media and Technology
This two-year project is communicating the results of scientific discoveries produced by an on-going LTER (Long-term Ecological Research) project devoted to understanding the Everglades ecosystem. Specifically, Dr. Heithaus is capitalizing on the discoveries funded through 0620409 (Coastal Oligotrophic Ecosystems Research) about the role of large-bodied, top predators in the Everglades, including bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) and American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). The STEM content of this project is biology, in particular ecology, the environment, and conservation. These results are being communicated via: (1) multimedia exhibit presentations at multiple museums and nature centers in southern Florida, primarily the Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS), located in Ft. Lauderdale near the Everglades and (2) online dissemination of mini-documentaries and other educational components at social media websites and the LTER web site. The target audience for the museum exhibit components includes learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, such as urban family groups reflecting the demographics of southern Florida. This project will also develop a documentary about Everglades ecology that is planned for dissemination on a cable TV channel devoted to natural history. In order to link with formal education, related educational deliverables are being produced for use in science classroom settings (grades 4 through 12) that are aligned with the state science standards and benchmarks. Formative assessment conducted by museum staff and university students will evaluate learning outcomes as they relate to STEM content learning goals. After the two-year funding period, the science learning opportunities produced from the current Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project will be sustained as the exhibit travels to other venues and as web deliverables are accessed on-line.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Michael Heithaus