Collaboration efforts between educator preparation programs and children's science museums are important in assisting elementary pre-service teachers connect the theory they have learned in their classrooms with the actual practice of teaching. Elementary pre-service teachers must not only learn the science content, but how to effectively deliver that science content to a group of students. One university provided their elementary pre-service teachers with the opportunity to prepare and deliver science lessons to students in a children's science museum in south Texas.
This study explores the effects of visitor observation of giant panda play on visitor concern for endangered species and satisfaction with seeing giant pandas. A total of 335 visitors to three institutions that house giant pandas participated in the study. These institutions are: the Chengdu Research Base of giant Panda Breeding, and the Chengdu Zoo, in China; and Zoo Atlanta in the U.S. After viewing the giant pandas, visitors were interviewed on whether they ever observed a panda play session, whether they observed panda play on the day of the visit, whether they wanted additional
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sarah BexellOlga JarrettLuo LanHu YanEstelle SandhausZhang ZhiheTerry Maple
This article follows the New York State Afterschool Network (NYSAN) as it develops a framework for program quality and related assessment tools. It suggests ways in which this framework can be useful to afterschool practitioners, technical assistance professionals, intermediaries, and policymakers nationwide.
Though many tabletop applications allow users to interact with the application using complex multi-touch gestures, automated tool support for testing such gestures is limited. As a result, gesture-based interactions with an application are often tested manually, which is an expensive and error prone process. In this paper, we present TouchToolkit, a tool designed to help developers automate their testing of gestures by incorporating recorded gestures into unit tests. The design of TouchToolkit was informed by a small interview study conducted to explore the challenges software developers face
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shahedul Huq KhandkarS. M. SohanJonathan SillitoFrank Maurer
In this article, Donna R. Braden, Experience Develop and Curator at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, provides tools and strategies to reduce "friction" when developing exhibitions. Included are helpful worksheets and lists that assist exhibit developers as they establish parameters while laying the initial exhibit groundwork, promote collaboration amongst the team, and assist stakeholders and other decision-makers in efficiently fulfilling their roles in the exhibition planning process. These tools and strategies are intended to be used as a personal toolkit, and can be adapted or revised