The Museum of the Rockies will plan an exhibit "The Rockies Rise Again." When completed, this exhibit will illustrate evolving Cenozoic landscapes and life forms as understood through research conducted by the museum's staff in the Northern Rocky Mountain region. This exhibit will provide the natural historical context for visitors as they explore the cultural history exhibits that will follow this section. Together, the Museum's exhibits will illustrate the theme "One Place Through All of Time." With this award they will engage in a series of planning activities will include a front-end evaluation study of the public's knowledge and interest in this subject, consultation with expert advisors, review of related Cenozoic exhibits in selected natural history museums, and a two-day symposium which will include a dialogue about the exhibit concepts between the scientists and the public to help complete the plan. They will also hire an educator to develop an educational plan that will link the exhibit with the needs of teachers and will address national and state science standards. Special attention will be given to developing materials and dissemination strategies that will serve educators in this largely rural setting. At the end of the twelve month planing period they will have a completed exhibit and education plan and will be able to move forward with the exhibit.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bonnie Sachatello-SawyerChristopher Hill
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is producing a large format film that examines the sun and the relationship between the earth, its inhabitants, and our mother star. SOLARMAX will present some of the newest discoveries about the sun and will place special emphasis on the defining impact of the sun on human life and culture. The influence of solar cycles on global warming will be explored and new, unprecedented high-definition images of the sun will be included for the first time in a large format film. The film will examine how multiple scientific disciplines interact to build a complete picture of the universe by delving into the history and philosophy of science, astronomy, astrophysics, solar physics, helioseismology, meteorology, spectrography, mathematics, and biology. The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, will serve as Executive Producer and distributor of SOLARMAX. The film will be produced by Robert Eather, an expert in magnetospheric physics and a science filmmaker. The Co-Producer, Writer, and Director will be John Weiley who previously served in these roles for the large format film, Antarctica. Advisors in the fields of space weather, solar physics, and archaeoastronomy include Louis Lanzerotte, Paul Dusenbery, Gaerhardt Haerendell, George Siscoe, and Edwin Krupp.
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Robert EatherJohn WeileyJohn WickstromMuseum of Science and Industry
The Anchorage Museum of History and Art will develop "Lifting the Fog: Russian Exploration in the North Pacific, 1728-1867." This exhibition will reveal the world of the naturalists, oceanographers, astronomers, cartographers, ethnographers and artists who first described the west coast of America and the northern Pacific Ocean to the world. Approximately 200,000 visitors to the museum will view the 5,300-sq. ft. exhibition. Public programs will complement the exhibition, including a family day, lecture series by marine biologists, living history programs, weekend workshops, and an international symposium. An illustrated catalog with interpretive essays and a school curriculum and teachers' guide will accompany the exhibition. The exhibition will travel to three additional venues in the United States.
Screenscope, Inc., is producing three programs in the PBS series, "Journey to Planet Earth." The series has the goal of helping the general public understand and cope with the difficulties of developing a global agenda that addresses the environmental concerns of the next millennium. The series will examine the earth using the latest satellite imagery as well as from providing a more closeup view through the eyes of people who inhabit the many different regions of the world. It will use intimate personal portraits to show how people's every day lives are affected by both local and global environmental pressures. The series will link the sciences with economics, politics, geography, and history. Each episode will feature four to five related stories and case studies selected from different geographic regions and about people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The television series will be supported by an informal, community-based outreach program in science museums and neighborhood centers, activity kits and teaching guides, interactive workshops on the World Wide Web, and strategic partnerships with environmental organizations to raise public awareness of the series and the outreach activities. The Co-PIs and producers of the television series are Marilyn and Hal Weiner. They will work closely with a group of advisors including: Chet Cooper, Battelle/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Edward Frieman, Director Emeritus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of the University of California; Nay Htun, United Nations Development Programme; Tom Lovejoy, Counselor to the Secretary for Biodiversity and Environmental Affairs, Smithsonian Institution; Per Pinstrup-Andersen, International Food Policy Research Institute; and Maurice Strong, Chairman of the Earth Council and former Secretary-General of the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In addition, each episode will have two research scientists who are experts on specific disciplines being featured. Outreach will be developed in association with the Chicago Academy of Sciences.
In this article, Paul Katz, Ph.D., Curator of the Texas Pharmacy Museum and partner in the PRIAM consulting firm, discusses the development of the "Playas...Gems of the Plains" traveling exhibit, produced by the Panhandle Museum Resource Sharing Consortium and later the Northwest Texas Museum Association. Katz describes the rationale behind the exhibit, its components, its uniqueness as a traveling exhibit, and evaluation findings.
This article highlights some of the diverse ways that different types of museums use place-based education to further their missions and benefit their audiences. Authors include Janet Petitpas, Assistant Director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Maggie Russell-Ciardi, Education Coordinator for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Lori Salles, Exhibit Manager at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, and Mary Jo Sutton, Director of Exhibitions at the Bay Area Discovery Museum.
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Janet PetitpasMaggie Russell-CiardiLori SallesMary Jo Sutton
The Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the Interdisciplinary Center for Coastal Studies, New York Botanical Garden, Puerto Rico Youth at Risk, Boy Scouts, and others implemented a citizen science program for age 12 and older. This project targeted local residents, visitors to Hacienda La Esperanza Reserve, and members of community environmental projects on topics including archeology and human impacts on local ecosystems; conservation and restoration of wetlands; and shoreline and costal processes.
The CMN helps communities in British Columbia and Canada map sensitive habitats and species distribution. Information is integrated from many sources to assist landuse planning and is freely available in over fifty user friendly atlases. The atlases have links to local and remote databases, WMS sources and geo-referenced video. The CMN supports Sensitive Habitat Inventory and Mapping (SHIM) projects and provides customized data entry, digitizing and other tools. By providing accurate and up to date information, the CMN and its many partners will help plan sustainable communities.
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Rob Knight
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This set of panel presentations and group discussion were part of the session titled "Impacts of Citizen Science," delivered on day two of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007. The panel presentations provide a wide spectrum of examples of the impact of citizen science in a range of disciplines, projects, and settings.
These 16 articles offer a gentle introduction to nano science and technology, and can be used as marketing pieces for discussing nano with the press during NanoDays or other nano event promotion.
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NISE Network
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Despite strong efforts by many people and institutions and a deep, ongoing commitment from the National Science Foundation, progress remains uneven and slower than desired with respect to broadening participation of people from all parts of society in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The broadening participation challenge will become even more urgent with increasing demographic and socioeconomic changes underway in our nation. Through this conference and workshop grant, the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) will convene a group of diverse thought leaders from across higher education, profit, non-profit, K-12 and informal STEM education sectors for one day of brainstorming and prioritizing possible ideas, strategies, and actions that could be aggressively pursued by broadening participation initiatives. The findings of this workshop could support ongoing, field-wide discussions about the next generation of projects and efforts to address issues of underrepresentation in STEM. This workshop will build upon a foundation of existing NSF programs and funded projects and will draw upon ongoing efforts by ASTC's Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) to address broadening participation challenges in informal STEM learning environments. The 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. The Inclusion Across the Nation of Communities of Learners that Have Been Underrepresented for Diversity in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) Leadership Workshop will engage up to 55 local and non-local participants from the higher education, profit, non-profit, K-12 and informal STEM education sectors that have been selected for their extensive but varied experiences with efforts to broaden participation in STEM. Before the workshop, participants will prepare for the plenary talks, panel presentations, and breakout session discussions by reading selected literature about effectively scaling innovations, collective impact strategies, catalytic innovations, and other related theory. Specific goals of this one-day workshop are 1) to consider potential scalable high-impact innovations in STEM education to assure success for all people across the nation; and 2) to generate ideas, strategies, and actions that could substantially alter the current landscape and potentially achieve a transformative change for inclusion. ASTC proposes to disseminate the workshop findings to worksop participants, the broader communities to which participants belong, and even the National Science Foundation. A workshop synthesis report and other content generated at the workshop (speaker slides, presentation video, graphic documentation to name a few) will reside at ASTC's informalscience.org website. ASTC proposes an extensive communications media strategy that will draw stakeholder attention to these resources and support field-wide discussion and action around broadening participation.
MEDMYST: Dissemination Phase II A Phase I grant, The Reconstructors Investigate Medical Mysteries, from the National Center for Research Resources (R25 RR15295) funded the creation and field-test of innovative web-based materials targeted for middle school students. The product has come to be known as MEDMYST.It is an episodic adventure series with accompanying classroom activities focusing on infectious diseases and the microbes that cause them. The MEDMYST materials consist of: a) web adventures; b) classroom activities; c) MEDMYST Magazine--all designed to engage students in problem-solving activities not likely to be encountered elsewhere. Each of these components is available free of charge on the web site (http://medmyst.rice.edu) and all components are aligned with the National Science Education Content Standards. An extensive field test involving over 700 students from 9 different schools tested the efficacy of these materials. The results, accepted for publication in American Society for Microbiology's Microbiology Education journal, indicated significant learning gains with exposure to the Internet component of the materials. In this Phase II application, the goals are: 1) To create a network of MEDMYST Dissemination Partners and Lead Teachers whose expertise and training will continue beyond the SEPA funding. 2) To amplify teaching of Infectious Disease related concepts though MEDMYST in middle school classrooms by training a minimum of 1200 teachers, who will teach approximately 150,000 students over a two-year period. 3) To evaluate the impact of MEDMYST teacher training and document the adoption process in classrooms. 4) To continue to promote MEDMYST in a variety of educational settings, such as homes, after-school programs, museums, and with links from other web sites. To accomplish these goals, we have formed partnerships with the University of Washington Educational Outreach, The Minnesota Science Museum, the John P. McGovern Museum of Health ad Medical Science, and the American Society for Microbiology.