RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Students find meaning and relevance in their learning when they connect lessons to real-world issues and possible career paths. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Conservation Connect, a freely available video series, connects learners to wildlife, technology, and careers. Videos and supplementary resources are designed to serve middle school youth, but elementary and high school educators—and even FWS retirees—report that they also use the tools. Each episode features a species, a conservation career, and technology that professionals use to study or protect that species and its
Public opinions toward emergent technologies may be highly dependent on the manner in which people are introduced to these technologies for the very first time. In this light, understanding how such first introductions are related to adolescents’ information seeking behaviors and their developing opinions may be particularly interesting because this target public can be considered to be not only future users of the technology but also future decision makers of its development. The present paper presents a case study of the introduction of ecogenomics among 246 adolescents who were asked to
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark BosRoy KloetCees KoolstraJaap Willems
Brazilian research has grown intensely in all areas of microbiology, with the increase in the amount of governmental resources for the sector and the strengthening of a greater number of research groups. However, very few academic studies deal with research about teaching and science communication in microbiology. There is no in-depth study of how this topic is currently being divulgated in communication journals, didactic books and the Internet, or about the interest and the difficulties faced by researchers in communicating microbiology to the general public. This paper investigates academic
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniela Franco Carvalho JacobucciGiuliano Buza Jacobucci
The impact of four half-hour science programs aired on commercial children's radio was assessed by Dr. Barbara Flagg of Multimedia Research in a causal-comparative between-groups study with prebroadcast and postbroadcast questionnaires. Of 253 fourth graders, 34% listened to one or more shows of the Kinetic City Super Crew series. Significantly more girls listened than boys. Listeners and Non-listeners did not differ on background variables of ethnic status, science attitudes, science reading and television viewing, and participation in seven of eight common at-home science activities
The L.C. Bates Museum will provide 1,700 rural fourth grade students and their families museum-based STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) educational programming including integrated naturalist, astronomy, and art activities that explore Maine's environment and its solar and lunar interactions. The project will include a series of eight classroom programs, family field trips, TV programs, family and classroom self-guided educational materials, and exhibitions of project activities including student work. By bringing programs to schools and offering family activities and field trips, the museum will be able to engage an underserved, mostly low-income population that would otherwise not be able to visit the museum. The museum's programming will address teachers' needs for museum objects and interactive explorations that enhance student learning and new Common Core science curriculum objectives, while offering students engaging learning experiences and the opportunity to develop 21st century leadership skills.
What are students' mental models of the environment? In what ways, if any, do students' mental models vary by grade level or community setting? These two questions guided the research reported in this article. The Environments Task was administered to students from 25 different teacher-classrooms. The student responses were first inductively analyzed in order to identify students' mental models of the environment. The second phase of analysis involved the statistical testing of the identified mental models. From this analysis four mental models emerged: Model 1, the environment as a place
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniel ShepardsonBryan WeeMichelle PriddyJon Harbor
This Pathways project responds to the high level of public skepticism about climate change science despite strong scientific consensus. In 2010, two George Mason University / Yale University polls became headline news in mainstream media (such as the NY Times and NPR) when they reported that 50% or more of our broadcast meteorologists and TV news directors are skeptical about global climate science. A full 30% of TV broadcast meteorologists, who are largely untrained in disciplines other than meteorology and weather forecasting, denounce anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as a hoax or a scam. Such polls strongly suggest that the general public trusts media statements over scientific facts, despite position statements acknowledging dominantly human responsibility for global warming in the past 50 years from nearly every U.S. professional society dealing with Earth sciences. Climate literacy in citizens and policy makers is essential for advancing responsible public policy on energy legislation, carbon emission reductions, and other climate change issues, and TV broadcast meteorologists have great potential for enhancing that literacy.
SciGirls CONNECT is a broad national outreach effort to encourage educators, both formal and informal, to adopt new, research-based strategies to engage girls in STEM. SciGirls (pbskids.org/scigirls) is an Emmy award-winning television program and outreach program that draws on cutting-edge research about what engages girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning and careers. The PBS television show, kids' website, and educational outreach program have reached over 14 million girls, educators, and families, making it the most widely accessed girls' STEM program available nationally. SciGirls' videos, interactive website and hands-on activities work together to address a singular but powerful goal: to inspire, enable, and maximize STEM learning and participation for all girls, with an eye toward future STEM careers. The goal of SciGirls is to change how millions of girls think about STEM. SciGirls CONNECT (scigirlsconnect.org) includes 60 partner organizations located in schools, museums, community organizations and universities who host SciGirls clubs, camps and afterschool programs for girls. This number is intended grow to over 100 by the end of the project in 2016. SciGirls CONNECT provides mini-grants, leader training and educational resources to partner organizations. Each partner training session involves educators from a score of regional educational institutions. To date, over 700 educators have received training from over 250 affiliated organizations. The SciGirls CONNECT network is a supportive community of dedicated educators who provide the spark, the excitement and the promise of a new generation of women in STEM careers. Through our partner, the National Girls Collaborative Project, we have networked educational organizations hosting SciGirls programs with dozens of female role models from a variety of STEM fields. The SciGirls CONNECT website hosts monthly webinars, a quarterly newsletter, gender equity resources, SciGirls videos and hands-on activities. SciGirls also promotes the television, website and outreach program to thousands of elementary and middle school girls and their teachers both locally and nationally at various events.
Most environmental learning takes place outside of the formal education system, but our understanding of how this learning actually occurs is in its infancy. By surfing the internet, watching nature documentaries, and visiting parks, forests, marine sanctuaries, and zoos, people make active choices to learn about various aspects of their environment every day. Free-Choice Learning and the Environment explores the theoretical foundations of free-choice environmental education, the practical implications for applying theory to the education of learners of all ages, and the policy implications
The Living on Earth's Ecological Literacy project (ELP) offers a comprehensive, flexible curricular framework that includes an integrated approach to field-based environmental studies, investigative journalism and computer-based radio production and engineering in middle and high school settings. The 2002-03 school year marked Year Three of the three-year, NSF-funded Ecological Literacy Project. Rockman et al, an educational research firm headquartered in San Francisco, conducted an independent evaluation of the ELP Year Two program activities (Char and Rockman, 2002), and continued evaluation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Saul RockmanWorld Media FoundationCindy Char
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.