Adding Families to the Equation in Appalachia is a multi-state collaborative effort to improve parental involvement in science, mathematics, and technology education in a region of Central Appalachia noted for its persistent poverty and isolation from opportunities. During the planning grant period, project staff and consultants will use key stakeholder groups to generate and test preliminary project ideas and will enhance and consolidate relationships among collaborative partners in 66 counties in six state of Central Appalachia. The planning is essential to build collaboration across the six states and to develop a strategy that will be successful in a region with low educational attainment and limited science and technology resources.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wimberly RoysterDonna HallJoanne Lang
This project is a collaboration between the Miami Museum of Science and the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Greater Miami (BBBS) to empower single-parent families to become actively engaged in the science, mathematics, and technology education (SMT) of their children. It will involve, over the course of the project, parents, mentors, and community elements to create and expand a resource network and support primarily father-absent homes. The design of the project is focused on providing resources and advocacy critical to the success of young children in SMT education. It is a project designed to get parents actively involved with their children's science, mathematics, and technology education. The program will serve Dade County, Florida families. Museum staff and volunteers of BBBS will work closely in the development of mentor materials to be nationally distributed. The strategies that are used and refined will be packaged in a Tripod Toolkit and Mentor Handbook that can be used by other community groups to aid and assist parents in becoming more active in the science, mathematics, and technology education of their children. In addition to the toolkit materials, a set of Science/math Matters activities will be included designed to promoted science learning in the home with parents and their children. These materials will be produced in both English and Spanish to meet the needs of a diverse and multicultural American society.
The Louisville Science Center and the National Center for Family Literacy will engage in a year's planning to introduce the Parent- Child Interaction Project to teams of educators in six target cities. The goal is to explore the feasibility of a future national implementation of the model. The Parent-Child Interaction Project aims to empower underserved parents to become their child's most important teacher and provide these parents and their children the opportunity to gain science, mathematics, and technology education together. The participants are the parents and pre-school children enrolled in family literacy programs. During the Project, parents and children will make at least four trips to the participating science-technology center and evaluate their trips during follow-up class sessions. The joint efforts of the family literacy programs and science- technology centers can achieve the following goals: * Improve the involvement of low-income and low-literacy parents in the education of their children, specifically in the areas of science, mathematics and technology. * Increase the awareness of local science and technology centers as available community resources, particularly for underserved audiences. * Use science center visits and related projects to extend NCFL classroom learning for adult education students, their children and their teachers.
The project includes a simulation based Family Learning Program to be administered through the International Challenger Learning Center (CLC) network. The goal is to develop families' skills in learning as a team through science, math and technology (SMT) in an environment where parents and children are co-travelers in a world of ideas. PACCT is disseminated through ten of the Challenger Learning Centers reaching 22,000 families nationwide. Many of these activities are completed in the home at no cost to the anticipated 12,500 participating families. Through this network of centers, all types of communities are served in many states. The activities include Sim-U-Voyages, where family teams work at home; Sim-U-Challenges, where families create a physical model responding to a challenge; Sim-U-Visits, where families hear from scientists and work as scientists in a team solving a problem; and Sim-U-Ventures, which result in flying a mission. Cost sharing is 8%.
The Education Development Center (EDC) is implementing the national expansion and institutionalization of the Playing to Win (PTW) Network. With the goal of working toward universal technology enfranchisement and prior support from the NSF Informal Science Education Program, the PTW Network currently links close to fifty agencies in a mutually supportive community of neighborhood technology learning centers serving people living in low-income areas who otherwise would have little or no access to computer-based technologies. The purposes of this phase of the project are: - to increase the number of affiliates nationally - to provide effective support for their technology programs and to do so in a planned and thoughtful manner which also is flexible and responsive to the flows, demands, and unforeseen opportunities fro community technology center development -- to move the affiliate membership toward independence and self-governance. Each year of the project, PTW will work in collaboration with the United Neighborhood Centers of America, the Alliance fro Community Media, NTIA-funded programs, FreeNets, and others in three to four target areas of the US to recruitment additional primary affiliates. The goal is to add 20 additional affiliates annually who will be supported by local coordinators and another 30 with subsidized telecommunications support. PTW plans to enrich programmatic content at the centers with special emphasis on math and science. The network will support an on-line math and science program consultant and continue to recruit and support affiliates with a math/science program emphasis. The Co-Principal Investigators for the project will be Myles Gordon, Director of EDC's Center for Learning, Teaching and Technology, and Antonia Stone, Founder of PTW and PI for the previous phases of the project.
The Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA) is producing and disseminating "Green Technology," a multimedia project that promotes active learning about environmentally beneficial technologies for the home, the workplace, and the community. The objective of the project are to change or consolidate the public's concepts about the fundamental relationships between the environment and technology at the grassroots pocketbook level, to enhance their understanding of the pertinent science and technology, and to provide them with practical information about how to take action for oneself and in the fulfillment of a wider civic responsibility. The components of the project include: o Three one-hour prime time television programs o Community Outreach through the National Community Education Association and their affiliates in 40 states. o Development of community education material including a 30-minute highlight tape to serve as a discussion springboard with accompanying discussion and resource guides. o A Viewer's Newsletter for each program which will include short articles on the basic science and technology explored in the program and a "What You Can Do" section. o A CD-ROM for use by parents and children at home and by students in school. o On-line information clearing house the SOLSTICE, the digital library of energy and environmental resources operated by the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology. o Teacher enhancement materials and activities for middle schools to be disseminated through the Teacher Educator's Network of the Association of Science-Technology Centers. o The National Academy of Engineering will identify engineers who can serve as "on-line consultants" to students and teachers involved in examining specific environmental issues. Richard Thomas, previously Executive Producer for "Mystery of the Senses" and "The World of Chemistry," will be PI and Executive Producer. Principal Content Advisory will be S. William Gouse, chief scientist and President of Energy Systems and Technology at MITRE. William McDonough, Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, will be the host of the television series.
This project, coordinated by the New Jersey Mathematics Coalition (and a major partner with the SSI) will use the recently completed New Jersey Frameworks in mathematics and science as the core of a parent education effort that will reach 300,000 parents of school age children in the state, representing 50% of the parent population and all 603 school districts. This project will be a vehicle for providing opportunities for parents to become familiar with these standards. The project will undertake a three-stage approach to parental outreach: (1) awareness activities, including the development of materials printed in both English and Spanish, public television, and a Website; (2) increasing involvement of parents through establishing a clearinghouse for information; and (3) activation activities to help parents work more effectively on mathematics and science reform efforts at the school, district, and state levels.
The Massachusetts SSI (Project PALMS) will conduct this project in partnership with MITS (the Museum Institute for Teaching Science, Inc.) and will develop, demonstrate the effectiveness of, and disseminate a locally-driven model for parental involvement in mathematics, science, and technology education. The model builds on the SSI structure by starting with parents who are active in PALMS District Leadership Teams for Systemic Change (approximately 2900 parents). These parents will have opportunities for additional training with materials such as Project PRISM, EQUALS, AAAS, etc. These support the new State frameworks and assessments developed through he SSI, and are also in support of the high quality curriculum materials recommended for implementation in schools. Parents will then develop local plans for engaging other parents in their communities. Materials will be developed, including a manual on How to Build Coalitions to Engage Community Members in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Reform. In addition, materials will be developed and outreach activities will be conducted to include activities for parents and children (estimated to reach an additional 21,000 parents) held in nontraditional environments such as subways, laundromats, health clinics, and malls. Products will include a manual on building coalitions to engage communities in supporting mathematics and science reform, and a collection of field-tested prototype outreach activities. Findings will be disseminated through the Eisenhower Consortia, National PTA, Urban League, and National Council of La Raza.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Thomas NoonanMary Jane SchmittPendred Noyce
The Hattiesburg Area Education Foundation is conducting a 12-month planning project in preparation for a Parental Involvement project. The planning objectives include the identification of materials and strategies in use, actively engaging parents, teachers, and other partners in dialogue about standards for mathematics and science education and in strategic planning, developing a plan for replication and dissemination, developing an evaluation plan, and developing a full proposal. A broad-based planning team is conducting the planning activities.
This planning project, sponsored by the Washington MESA program, will carry out a planning program which will result in a full proposal to support a strong parents program in the four MESA centers in the State of Washington. With funds from the planning grant the MESA staff will do an assessment of need for a parents program at ten target sites, identify potential partners in working with the project and develop a parent involvement plan for each center. Specific tasks will be to identify a parent coordinator at each site, to prepare the sites to deliver a program for family math, science and technology training and to develop parent leaders at each site who will work with the schools so that they can deliver a strong math, science and technology to all students as well as prepare parents to become active in their children's learning.
The Educational Film Center will complete production of a science, engineering, and technology careers exhibit and informal science education project for use in science museums, libraries, schools, and community locations. The twelve additional interactive and linear career profiles to be produced under this grant will bring the total number of careers available in a fully interactive mode to thirty-two. Users will be able to explore each of these careers with first person video profiles of people in science and engineering and animated/reality video simulations of work experiences in these fields. The exhibit also with provide guidance to help users make decisions about education and career choices and will include a database of information about approximately 200 additional science and math-based professions. The project also will undertake the development and testing of eight permanent model Family Outreach Science Career Education Centers in eight cities. These centers will be based on and will expand upon the experience the project had in their earlier model Parent Outreach Science Career Program. Utilization support will be provided through special target leader guides, presentations and workshops at national and regional meetings of user organizations and groups, and a SETQuest bulletin board and e-mail network for the exchange of user science career programming. This project is a collaborative effort among four organizations: The Educational Film Center (EFC) is responsible for management of the project and for the development of production of the software and the documentary video profiles; COMAP is responsible for selecting and hiring content consultants, for formative and summative evaluation, and will jointly market and distribute the material with EFC; The New York Hall of Science is responsible for the exhibit kiosk and graphics, the design and development of the workbook and museum installation print components of the project, and will serve as principal test site for the exhibit; and the AAAS is coordinating the design, implementation, and testing of parent outreach program. All of the organizations will be involved in presentations and dissemination of project information to the informal and formal education communities.
Unicorn Projects, Inc. is producing a project about historic mills in American and the science and technology of their operation. The project will combine a nationally broadcast one-hour PBS special with print and interactive educational materials for the home and school markets along with family-oriented personal appearance by host-author David Macaulay at selected museum and mill sites across the country. The goal of the project is to acquaint viewers and participants with the technological innovations and the scientific, social and historical significance of water-powered mills in the early part of the industrial revolution. In addition to the television program the project will produce Mill Times newspapers applicable in formal as well as informal settings, curriculum-based school videos and teachers guides, activity kits including "toys" designed to introduce concepts in applied mechanics, and family-activity programs at selected sites. The PI and Producer/Director will be Larry Klein who has produced and directed the previous Macaulay programs among many other PBS specials. David Macaulay, author of many best-selling books on architecture and technology, will be the host and will work closely with Mark Olshaker, the writer, in developing the script for the program. The Education Director will be Toby Levine. The principal technology and history advisor will be Patrick Malone, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and American Civilization at Brown University and past president of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. The science advisor will be Theodore Ansbacher, principal of Science Services, an informal science education consulting company. Other advisors include Robert Dalzell, Gary Kulik, Judith McGaw, and Merrit Roe Smith.