FETCH with Ruff Ruffman is a daily half-hour PBS television series with accompanying Web and outreach activities targeted to 6- to 10-year olds. The program brings science learning to young children by uniquely blending live-action with animation, game show convention with reality programming, and humor with academics. The intended impacts are to 1) help the target audience develop interest, knowledge and skills necessary to do science; 2) train afterschool leaders to better facilitate science activities with kids; and 3) demonstrate how media can be used to teach substantive science and share the results of project evaluation with others in the field. The requested funds will allow the project to expand the science curriculum with 20 new half-hour episodes and expand the Web site, focusing on three new science themes that highlight topics of interest to this age group. The Web site will include four new science-based Web games that will allow kids to create and post content of their own design and contribute to nationwide data collection. A new FETCH Online Training resource will be created to help afterschool leaders to effectively engage in FETCH's hands-on science activities. American Institutes for Research (AIR) will conduct summative evaluation of the Online Training program.
In this Communicating Research to Public Audiences project, the University of Colorado at Boulder -- in partnership with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, and the CU-Boulder Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement -- is building on the work they have done via their NSF research award, A Meta-Design Framework for Participative Software Systems, in which they have been developing participative software systems (PPS) and applications of the framework. Community of Soundscapes will employ newly developed mobile computing and collaborative mapping technology in programs that help users gain greater insights and stake into the shared environment in which they live and visit. Sound Camera, a digital recording device outfitted with GPS mapping software, allows users to collect audio clips of their sonic experiences as they explore their cities, parks and other environments and upload them online onto a digital map through a Web 2.0 application. They can then compose, annotate, and share soundscapes of the places where the sounds were recorded. A Web site will be developed to expand the project's reach to audiences not in the Boulder programs. Professional development training will be provided for collaborators and through the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education. The educational goals are to promote literacy of PSS and engage the public in personally meaningful activities that benefit environmental education (cognitive goal) and expand environmental awareness (affective goal). The project work and its evaluation processes (by Wells Resources, Inc.) are intended to advance the field of informal science education with respect to PSS and to study how these new technologies might affect shifts in the kinds of experiences various audiences prefer to have.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gerhard FischerElisa GiaccardiGerhard Fischer
The goal of this project is to educate children between the ages of 10 and 18 about the ecology of insects and forests, how human activities affect their interaction, and how scientific research is conducted. It will disseminate information throughout Indiana based on research award DEB 0345331, Cicadas and Forests Education. For a period during May and June 2004 the United States was captivated by periodical cicadas in an unusual convergence of popular and scientific interest. This project will use this heightened awareness as a vehicle for informal science education as additional broods emerge in 2007 and 2008 in the Midwest and South. The project will use existing video footage from the research to produce a documentary film on periodical cicadas for airing on public television stations and distribution on DVDs to schools; an interactive computer-based presentation in PowerPoint; and an interactive 3-D animation of the cicada life cycle for use in a science center. Project collaborators include local public television stations, Wonderlab (a science museum), the Indiana State Museum and school systems in Indiana.