This article features eight abstracts from the First Annual Visitor Studies Conference. Institutions represented in these abstracts include the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, Science Learning, Inc., Hood Associates, Jacksonville State University, Smithsonian Institution, and University of Florida.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
G. Donald AdamsJohn H FalkMarilyn G. HoodDonald PattersonStephen BitgoodD.D. HilkeJohn Scott FosterJohn J. Koran, Jr.Mary Lou KoranSteven StartAnn BlackwoodHarriet Landers
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In this report, Minda Borun summarizes the activities of the business meeting of the Education Committee, which took place at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums in Pittsburgh.
Chemistry in the Community (ChemCom) was designed to provide an attractive, open access route for all high school students to the realm of relevant and useful chemical phenomena. What began as a dream a few years ago is now a well-developed high school program brought about by the concerted efforts of high school teachers, college and university professors, and industrial chemists and financed by the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society. This three-year project is designed as a partnership to support the dissemination of the Chemcom curriculum. Specially selected teachers will be educated so that they can become resource teachers who will conduct ChemCom inservice workshops throughout the country. These resource teachers are expected to represent as many as 150 school systems and will reach as many as 2,000 teachers with their inservice programs. The project also includes a series of networking activities entitled "An Evening with ChemCom, the establishment of a computer network, and the production of a newsletter. The evaluation will focus on the effectiveness of this particular model for implementing curriculum change. The total cost sharing (ACS, Publisher, School Systems) is expected to be almost five times the NSF request.