Millions of people around the world watch live streaming wildlife cams, but they aren’t just watching: they are asking questions, trading information, and witnessing events that may be undocumented in the scientific literature. The goal of Bird Cams Lab was to design a digital space and framework enabling online communities to engage in a co-created scientific inquiry process utilizing wildlife cams to answer bird-related questions of common interest. To achieve this goal, the project engaged participants at every stage of the research process—including observation, generating and selecting
This three-year project focuses on professional research experiences for middle and high school STEM teachers through investigations of the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). Each year 10 teachers (in diverse fields including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, and oceanography) and three to five professional paleontologists will participate in a four-phase process of professional development, including: a (1) pre-trip orientation (May); (2) 12 days in Panama in July collecting fossils from previously reported, as well as newly discovered, sites; (3) a post-trip on-line (cyber-enabled) Community of Practice; and (4) a final wrap-up at the end of each cohort (December). In addition, some of the teachers may also elect to partner with scientists in their research laboratories, principally located in California, Florida, and New Mexico. The partners in Panama are from the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí (UNACHI), including faculty and students, as well as STEM teachers from schools in Panama. Teachers that participate in this RET will develop lesson plans related to fossils, paleontology, evolution, geology, past climate change, and related content aligned with current STEM standards.
The GABI, catalyzed by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama during the Neogene, had a profound effect on the evolution and geography of terrestrial organisms throughout the Americas and marine organisms globally. For example, more than 100 genera of terrestrial mammals dispersed between the Americas, and numerous marine organisms had their interoceanic distributions cut in half by the formation of the Isthmus. Rather than being considered a single event that occurred about 4 million years ago, the GABI likely represents a series of dispersals over the past 10 million years, some of which occurred before full closure of the Isthmus. New fossil discoveries in Panama resulting from the GABI RET (Research Experiences for Teachers) are thus contributing to the understanding of the complexity and timing of the GABI during the Neogene.
This award is being co-funded with the Office International and Integrative Activities.
This document describes the summative project evaluation of 5 annual cohorts of STE(A)M teachers, mostly from California, Florida, and New Mexico participating in out-of-school authentic research experiences collecting fossils and learning about geology, biology, and the natural history along the Panama Canal, and their experiences with museums and research collections. The STEM content of this project is based on the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI) of animals and plants across the Isthmus of Panama over the past 5 million years. This report also describes the efficacy of sustained
Biology has become a powerful and revolutionary technology, uniquely poised to transform and propel innovation in the near future. The skills, tools, and implications of using living systems to engineer innovative solutions to human health and global challenges, however, are still largely foreign and inaccessible to the general public. The life sciences need new ways of effectively engaging diverse audiences in these complex and powerful fields. Bio-Tinkering Playground will leverage a longtime partnership between the Stanford University Department of Genetics and The Tech Museum of Innovation to explore and develop one such powerful new approach.
The objective of Bio-Tinkering Playground is to create and test a groundbreaking type of museum space: a DIY community biology lab and bio-makerspace, complete with a unique repertoire of hands-on experiences. We will tackle the challenge of developing both open-ended bio-making activities and more scaffolded ones that, together, start to do for biology, biotech, and living systems what today’s makerspaces have done for engineering.
A combined Design Challenge Learning, making, and tinkering approach was chosen because of its demonstrated effectiveness at fostering confidence, creative capacity, and problem solving skills as well as engaging participants of diverse backgrounds. This educational model can potentially better keep pace with the emerging and quickly evolving landscape of biotech to better prepare young people for STEM careers and build the next generation of biotech and biomedical innovators.
Experience development will be conducted using an iterative design process that incorporates prototyping and formative evaluation to land on a final cohort of novel, highly-vetted Bio-Tinkering Playground experience. In the end, the project will generate a wealth of resources and learnings to share with the broader science education field. Thus, the impacts of our foundational work can extend well beyond the walls of The Tech as we enable other educators and public institutions around the world to replicate our model for engagement with biology.
The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) will develop, test, market, and disseminate an interactive graphic novel iBook that will use the interests of young people (ages 10–14) in animals and comics to engage them in learning about health and clinical research. Provisionally called “Transmission: Astonishing Tales of Human-Animal Diseases,” the project represents a new approach to engaging young people in biomedical science learning.
Graphic novels are one of the fastest growing categories in publishing and bookselling, and today, they are significantly more sophisticated than the comics that came before them. They are also enormously popular among young people. The proposed graphic novel iBook will focus on the diseases that humans and animals share and pass between them (sometimes to devastating consequences), from Ebola, bird flu, and West Nile disease to influenza, measles, and pneumonia. Moreover, like many other contemporary graphic novels, it will address a pressing issue of the day—amely, the growth of zoonotic and anthropozoonotic diseases.
The iBook will be developed in a digital, interactive format (a growing trend within the genre) and, like many graphic novel titles, will take a mystery and forensic crime approach to exploring its content. Ultimately, Transmission will become a national model for conveying biomedical understanding through the use of up-to-the-minute interactive iBook technologies and an engaging graphic novel format.
The HOWL science team set out to analyze the quality of the Hofmann Forest’s watershed in order to understand the Hofmann’s place in the coastal ecosystem as a whole and how its quality would affect the surrounding human and ecological community. However, we realized quickly that we would need help collecting hundreds of stream water samples and observations, and so we partnered with the Izaak Walton League to help us contact and get local community members involved in such an overwhelming task. Local volunteers will not only help collect samples for this large-scale citizen science project, but will also help us try out some new equipment for water sampling and testing. And so, along with your help, the HOWL Project will:
Gain knowledge of water quality, and quantity, of the White Oak, New, and Trent Rivers in the Hofmann Forest in Eastern NC.
Demonstrate the feasibility of using low-cost analytical equipment for water quality testing.
Increase understanding of North Carolina’s rapidly changing coast due to the threats of sea-level rise, deforestation, agricultural expansion, and new substantial developments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Meredith HovisFrederick CubbageMadhusudan KattiKathleen McGinley
The Computational Thinking in Ecosystems (CT-E) project is funded by the STEM+Computing Partnership (STEM+C) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the integration of computing in STEM teaching and learning. The project is a collaboration between the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network, and Design I/O. It will address the need for improved data, modeling and computational literacy in young people through development and testing of a portable, computer-based simulation of interactions that occur within ecosystems and between coupled natural and human systems; computational thinking skills are required to advance farther in the simulation. On a tablet computer at NYSCI, each participant will receive a set of virtual "cards" that require them to enter a computer command, routine or algorithm to control the behavior of animals within a simulated ecosystem. As participants explore the animals' simulated habitat, they will learn increasingly more complex strategies needed for the animal's survival, will use similar computational ideas and skills that ecologists use to model complex, dynamic ecological systems, and will respond to the effects of the ecosystem changes that they and other participants elicit through interaction with the simulated environment. Research on this approach to understanding interactions among species within biological systems through integration of computing has potential to advance knowledge. Researchers will study how simulations that are similar to popular collectable card game formats can improve computational thinking and better prepare STEM learners to take an interest in, and advance knowledge in, the field of environmental science as their academic and career aspirations evolve. The project will also design and develop a practical approach to programing complex models, and develop skills in communities of young people to exercise agency in learning about modeling and acting within complex systems; deepening learning in young people about how to work toward sustainable solutions, solve complex engineering problems and be better prepared to address the challenges of a complex, global society.
Computational Thinking in the Ecosystems (CT-E) will use a design-based study to prototype and test this novel, tablet-based collectable card game-like intervention to develop innovative practices in middle school science. Through this approach, some of the most significant challenges to teaching practice in the Next Generation Science Standards will be addressed, through infusing computational thinking into life science learning. CT-E will develop a tablet-based simulation representing six dynamic, interconnected ecosystems in which students control the behaviors of creatures to intervene in habitats to accomplish goals and respond to changes in the health of their habitat and the ecosystems of which they are a part. Behaviors of creatures in the simulation are controlled through the virtual collectable "cards", with each representing a computational process (such as sequences, loops, variables, conditionals and events). Gameplay involves individual players choosing a creature and habitat, formulating strategies and programming that creature with tactics in that habitat (such as finding food, digging in the ground, diverting water, or removing or planting vegetation) to navigate that habitat and survive. Habitats chosen by the participant are part of particular kinds of biomes (such as desert, rain forest, marshlands and plains) that have their own characteristic flora, fauna, and climate. Because the environments represent complex dynamic interconnected environmental models, participants are challenged to explore how these models work, and test hypotheses about how the environment will respond to their creature's interventions; but also to the creatures of other players, since multiple participants can collaborate or compete similar to commercially available collectable card games (e.g., Magic and Yu-Go-Oh!). NYSCI will conduct participatory design based research to determine impacts on structured and unstructured learning settings and whether it overcomes barriers to learning complex environmental science.
This paper explores the construction of hybrid spaces through the observation of middle school children engaged in short science projects in an informal science learning programme. Hybrid spaces are not just physical structures, but refer to contexts, relationships and knowledges developed by children as their social worlds and identities merge with the normative expectations of school science. Hybrid spaces have been characterised in three different ways: as a convergent space between academic and traditionally marginalised knowledges and discourses; as a navigational space, or a way of
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden has placed a strategic focus on becoming more guest-focused, which includes tailoring interpretive exhibits to engage families, our primary audience. The Wings of the World exhibit building was reinterpreted to create meaningful experiences that connect families to nature through birds and inspire them to become better bird neighbors. As guests navigate the building, which reopened in April 2018, they observe more than 50 bird species from across the globe while making connections to local birds.
Over three years, Zoo guests participated in development and design through focus groups, prototyping, observations, interviews, and exit questionnaires to shape and assess the final interpretive design. Innovative opportunities to promote family interaction include an immersive, interpretive space where guests role play as a flock of migratory birds facing challenges along their journey, such as avoiding collisions with glass and finding suitable habitat. Each challenge teaches guests how they can make this journey easier for birds by addressing that particular issue in their own home. Guests can also practice their local bird identification skills by playing “Guess Who? Name that Cincinnati Bird.” And they are invited to pledge to take action on behalf of birds.
Results from evaluation conducted by Lifelong Learning Group suggest that Wings of the World successfully engages family groups. Guests took away a strong understanding of the general messages of the exhibit space, with enough specificity to articulate key conservation actions they could take to become better bird neighbors. The strongest successes in messaging were those that were cross-cutting and visible throughout the whole space: improving awareness related to bird diversity, encouraging visitors to pay closer attention to birds around them, and inspiring a connection to nature.
The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) aims to help member institutions inform and educate the public about science through a global lens. The World Biotech Tour (WBT) was a three-year initiative designed to not only promote a greater understanding of biotechnology through public outreach and programming led by science centers and museums, but also as an opportunity for ASTC to collect useful data on the resources required and challenges encountered at different science museums around the world when implementing a long-term, multi-country program. The WBT involved students
California Academy of Sciences contracted with Wendy Meluch of VisitorStudies.com to design and conduct an evaluation of the Habitat Earth planetarium show (HE) during winter/spring 2017. HE is a 30-minute show which features a pre-recorded movie-like section, and a live presentation. HE team members’ primary interests were to assess cognitive, affective and behavioral impacts of the show on audience members, and understand the roles and relative strengths of the live and pre-recorded segments of the program in manifesting those impacts. Findings of this study will inform development of the