A summative evaluation in Jersey City, New Jersey at the Liberty Science Center’s IMAX® Dome Theater was carried out with adult (18+ years) viewers. A quasi-experimental separate-sample pretest/posttest design was used. "Island of the Sharks" made a positive impact on sample adult audience member’s knowledge of topics presented in the film and was reportedly moderately or very interesting to 81% of the adult sample. A second summative evaluation involving three classes from each of two middle schools was carried out with seventh grade students. A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest
A quasi-experimental separate-sample pretest/posttest design was used to assess the impact of the giant screen film "The Greatest Places" on adult viewers. A second evaluation was implemented with eighth grade students who either viewed the film after two related reading activities or viewed the film without associated activity.
Sage is a robot that has been installed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History as a full-time autonomous member of the staff. Its goal is to provide educational content to museum visitors in order to augment their museum experience. This paper discusses all aspects of the related research and development. The functional obstacle avoidance system, which departs from the conventional occupancy grid-based approaches, is described. Sage's topological navigation system, using only color vision and odometric information, is also described. Long-term statistics provide a quantitative measure of
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Illah NourbakhshJudith BobenageSebastien GrangeRon LutzRoland MeyerAlvaro Soto
The purpose of this research study was to investigate: students' schema structure for human evolution; their idiosyncratic conceptual change after visiting a museum exhibition; the role of alternative frameworks during learning; and the function of affect in learning. Thirty eleventh and twelfth grade high school students, eleven males and nineteen females, visited an exhibition on human evolution and participated in an opened-ended pre and post interview and Likert-type questionnaire. The interviews were transcribed, segmented by using shifts in natural language, and pre and post schema
In the following pages I describe what happens when an exhibit dense in local meanings enters the national arena. The Yup'ik mask exhibit Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer) began as visual repatriation—bringing objects out of museums back into a local context—and ended as a tribal exhibit displayed in three very different majority institutions, including an American Indian museum, a natural history museum, and an art museum. The mask exhibit was developed as a three-way collaboration between Yup'ik community members, an anthropologist, and museum professionals. As it traveled farther
This article focuses on the setting factors associated with live animal exhibit design from the visitor perspective. Setting includes the physical features and events occurring in both the animal enclosure and the visitor areas.
The Milwaukee Public Museum will develop Adventures in Science: An Interactive Exhibit Gallery. This will be a 7250 sq. ft. interactive exhibit with associated public programs and materials that link the exhibit with formal education. The goal of Adventures in Science is to promote understanding of biological diversity, the forces that have change it over time, and how scientists study and affect change. The exhibit will consist of three areas. "Our Ever-Changing World" will feature "dual scene" habitat dioramas that will convey at-a-glance how environments change over time. "The Natural History Museum" will be a reconstruction of a museum laboratory and collections area to protray behind-the-scenes scientific and curatorial activities that further the study of biological diversity, ecology and systematics. An "Exploration Center: will bridge these two areas and will be designed to accommodate live presentations, group activities and additional multimedia stations for Internet and intranet access. Using interactive devices, visitors will be encouraged to make hypothesis, examine evidence, compare specimens, construction histories of biological and geological changes, and develop conclusions about the science behind biodiversity and extinction issues. Visitors should also come away with an increased understanding of the role of systematic collections in understanding biological diversity. Information on MPM research programs will be highlighted in "The Natural History Museum" section and will be updated frequently. Annual Teacher Training Institutes for pre-service and in-service teachers will present strategies for using the gallery's multimedia stations, lab areas, and Web site links. Special attention will be given to reaching new audiences including those in the inner city and people with disabilities.
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Allen YoungJames KellyPeter SheehanSusan-Sullivan BorkinRolf JohnsonMary Korenic
Vital Signs a community-based education program that links middle school students, citizen scientists, and scientists in the collection and analysis of environmental data related to invasive species. Vital Signs leverages technology to enable students to practice scientific inquiry, collect rigorous and consistent data, share the data and knowledge they have collected, and to serve as a distributed data collection network for the scientific community.
Great Lakes Worm Watch is a project that requires a half day training session that teaches you about the ecology, extraction, identification, and preservation of earthworms. Samples of worms are collected three times during late summer and early fall at different sites using the liquid mustard extraction method. By working in cooperation with Great Lakes Worm Watch out of Duluth, MN and uploading the data collected to the NatureMapping website, you provide valuable knowledge about the locations of established populations of earthworms in Wisconsin forests.
Calflora is a web site you can use to learn about about plants that grow in the wild in California: both native plants and weeds. You can enter the common or scientific name of a plant to view an illustrated table of plants that match the name you entered. Click one of the plants in the table to learn a lot of detail about that plant, in particular, where it's been observed in California. You can also enter a place and get an illustrated list of the plants that grow "here". You define "here" by zip code, place name, or any of a number of other ways. Then click "Search for Plants" to get an illustrated list of plants.
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (RTHU), Archilochus colubris, are the most widely distributed of the 339 species of hummingbirds, occurring in all ten countries of North and Central America. They come frequently to nectar plants and backyard sugar water feeders and are easily observed. Nonetheless, many aspects of RTHU natural history are not well understood, so “Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project” has teamed with EarthTrek to allow citizen scientists to collect data about RTHU migration and nesting. Operation RubyThroat has been in operation since 1984 as a outreach initiative of Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, South Carolina USA. The project is also affiliated with The GLOBE Program, through which K-12 teachers and students make hummingbird observations and submit data through the GLOBE Web site. Now, through EarthTrek, adult citizen scientists and independent students also can contribute important data to the overall Operation RubyThroat project. Principal Investigator for Operation RubyThroat is Bill Hilton Jr., an internationally known educator-naturalist recognized by Discover Magazine as one of the top ten citizen scientists. Each winter Bill takes groups of adult citizen scientists to Central America to help with hands-on studies of RTHU on their wintering grounds. These trips to Central America are coordinated through Holbrook Travel, one of EarthTrek's concept partners; while in the Neotropics participants continue to collect RTHU data to earn additional EarthTrek points through participation in Operation RubyThroat. To learn about these successes—or to find out how you can join Bill on one of his exciting trips in 2010 or beyond—please visit the Operation RubyThroat Web site. You may also wish to keep abreast of hummingbird activities and other natural history happenings by subscribing to "This Week at Hilton Pond," a regular series of award-winning photo essays written by Bill and available on line through the Hilton Pond Web site.
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Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
This report presents the findings from a study conducted by Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A), for the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM), Washington, DC. The study was designed to investigate how visitors respond to the display of the Museum's human remains collection. Specifically, the research objectives were to: determine visitors' motivation for visiting the Museum and their expectations of the Museum identify reactions to a range of specimens, including models, illustrations, wet specimens, skeletal specimens, fetuses, and plastinated specimens ascertain what aspects of the
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.National Museum of Health and Medicine