Through its traveling exhibition program, the Association of Science-Technology Centers worked for many years to advance the culture and practice of hands-on science learning, with support from the National Science Foundation. This article describes workshops, staff exchanges, and apprenticeships that accompanied a number of exhibitions, beginning in 1973. The community website ExhibitFiles, which opened in 2007, served the same purpose, as an archive of community-contrbuted case studies and reviews of science exhibitions.
In July 2020, Dr. Brigid Barron and her team at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center convened a virtual workshop to mobilize a community of investigators to explore innovative methods for studying family and community learning during the pandemic. Participants included NSF RAPID-COVID grantees from Stanford University, University of Washington, and the University of Michigan.
This report summarizes the strategies and insights generated at this workshop so that they may be shared among a wider network of researchers, practitioners, funders, and
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
By using widely-available technologies, this project brings fully online instructional coaching in STEM to out-of-school educators who live too remotely to attend ongoing in-person workshops.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sue AllenPerrin ChickScott ByrdAlexandria BrasiliLiv DetrickLynn FarrinHannah Lakin
The goal of this three-year project is to leverage NSF’s investment in both SciGirls and computer science education by engaging 8-13 year-old girls in computational thinking and coding through innovative transmedia programming which inspires and prepares them for future computer science studies and careers.
Supported by the National Science Foundation, the Global Soundscapes! Big Data, Big Screens, Open Ears project employs a variety of informal learning experiences to present the physics of sound and the new science of soundscape ecology. The interdisciplinary science of soundscape ecology analyzes sounds over time in different ecosystems around the world. The major components of the Global Soundscapes project are an educator-led interactive giant-screen theater show, group activities, and websites. All components are designed with both sighted and visually impaired students in mind. Multimedia
The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports the most meritorious ideas submitted as proposals from researchers and educators in all fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Creating opportunities and developing innovative strategies to broaden participation among diverse individuals, institutions, and geographic areas are critical to the NSF mission of identifying and funding work at the leading edge of discovery. The creative engagement of diverse ideas and perspectives is essential to enabling the transformative research that invigorates our nation’s scientific
This EAGER project sought to generate early knowledge for the museum field about the capabilities and limitations of an Indoor Positioning System to: 1) automate the collection of visitor movement data for museum research, and 2) enable location-aware applications designed to support museum visitor learning. Working with Qualcomm, Inc., the Exploratorium installed and experimented with an early prototype of a whole-museum, WiFi-based IPS that acquired and processed timestamped location data (latitude/longitude) from mobile test devices, similar to cell phones. The project 1) defined IPS ground