The New Children's Museum will launch the LAByrinth project to engage the community in the creation of a permanent art installation. The museum will convene a cross-disciplinary team to design and build the LAByrinth, a climbing structure that will serve 140,000 people annually. The museum will develop relationships with underserved families and current and future museum users, and also create an ongoing community-based exhibition development process to create sustainable mechanisms for continued community involvement. The project will introduce a new socially-engaged process for creating exhibitions, which will serve as a sustainable creative catalyst for San Diego families.
The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico will develop and implement "Art and Technology," which will provide learning opportunities to at-risk youth in the San Juan metropolitan area by integrating the museum's exhibits and collections as a platform for learning activities and dynamic thinking. Through lessons on digital media, photography, and art aligning with academic standards, students will acquire technology and problem-solving skills, language proficiency and communication skills, the ability to better interact with peers, and enhanced information skills. At-risk youth will be able to use the museum as an innovative learning facility with free art and technological resources to develop their skills to learn, create, and share with their peers their work in a safe environment.
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History will develop traveling natural history science curricula kits for K-12 students. This project will expand the museum's outreach program, featuring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content with a focus on Oklahoma geology, life, and cultural science. The museum will share the educational kits, featuring materials aligning with state educational standards, with teachers across Oklahoma. The museum's digitization of the kits will increase the capacity and number of teachers who have access to the material and enable students to experience high-quality STEM educational opportunities offsite and online.
The L.C. Bates Museum will provide 1,700 rural fourth grade students and their families museum-based STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) educational programming including integrated naturalist, astronomy, and art activities that explore Maine's environment and its solar and lunar interactions. The project will include a series of eight classroom programs, family field trips, TV programs, family and classroom self-guided educational materials, and exhibitions of project activities including student work. By bringing programs to schools and offering family activities and field trips, the museum will be able to engage an underserved, mostly low-income population that would otherwise not be able to visit the museum. The museum's programming will address teachers' needs for museum objects and interactive explorations that enhance student learning and new Common Core science curriculum objectives, while offering students engaging learning experiences and the opportunity to develop 21st century leadership skills.
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that support envisioning the future of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. In this Cyberlearning EAGER project, the project team is developing foundations for using "paper mechatronics" as a learning technology. Paper mechatronics makes possible a craft-oriented approach to engineering and computing education that integrates key concepts from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control systems, and computer programming, while using paper as the primary material for learner design, exploration, and inquiry. In this approach, learners will design foldable paper components and assemblies; program motors, sensors and controls; test their ideas iteratively; and share their designs on a website. This paper-based modeling approach to learning concepts in and practices of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control systems, and computer programming ultimately aims to make it possible for all learners to have exposure to and the opportunity to participate in creative engineering, design, and computer programming.
The approach to learning through designing and making through paper mechatronics is made possible by a convergence of many different technological factors -- the array of small computers, sensors, and actuators that are becoming available at low cost and a size that children can use; availability of a wide variety of manipulable conductive materials (threads, paints, fabrics); low-cost and precise desktop and laser cutters for paper and similar materials; a wide variety of novel paper-like materials; and new ways of interacting with the computer. The approach has its foundations in Papert's constructionism and in the current maker movement, but it has potential beyond constructionism itself, both in practice and with respect to what can potentially be learned about learning and development in in context of its use.
Armory Center for the Arts will develop, deliver, and evaluate "Artful Connections with Science," an innovative new visual arts-science integrated curriculum for the fourth and fifth grade levels in the Pasadena and Los Angeles Unified School Districts. "Artful Connections with Science" will provide support to the education community at a critical juncture as California adopts the Next Generation Science Standards. It will also enable the center to build organizational capacity for the delivery of arts-integration curriculum in multiple districts, thus increasing sustainability and helping to improve lives through the power of art.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Doris Hausmann
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Writing Project (NWP) is collaborating with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) on a four-year, full-scale development project that is designed to integrate science and literacy. Partnerships will be formed between NWP sites and ASTC member science centers and museums to develop, test, and refine innovative programs for educators and youth, resulting in the creation of a unique learning network. The project highlights the critical need for the integration of science and literacy and builds on recommendations in the Common Core State Standards and the National Research Council's publication, "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas." The content focus includes current topics in science and technology such as environmental science, sustainability, synthetic biology, geoengineering, and other subjects which align with science center research and exhibits. The project design is supported by a framework that incorporates a constructivist/inquiry-based approach that capitalizes on the synergy between rigorous science learning and robust literacy practices. Project deliverables include a set of 10 local partnership sites, professional development for network members, a project website, and an evaluation report highlighting lessons learned. Partnership sites will be selected based on interest, proximity, history, and expertise. Two geographically and demographically diverse cohorts, consisting of five partnerships each will be identified in Years 2 and 3. Each set of partners will be charged with creating a comprehensive two-year plan for science literacy activities and products to be implemented at local sites. It is anticipated that the pilot programs may result in the creation of new programs that merge science and writing, integrate writing into existing museum science programs, or integrate science activities into existing NWP programs. Interest-driven youth projects such as citizen science and science journalism activities are examples of programmatic approaches that may be adopted. The partners will convene periodically for planning and professional development focused on the integration of science and literacy for public and professional audiences, provided in part by national practitioners and research experts. A network Design Team that includes leadership representatives from NWP, ASTC, and the project evaluator, Inverness Research, Inc., will oversee project efforts in conjunction with a national advisory board, while a Partnership Coordinator will provide support for the local sites. Inverness Research will conduct a multi-level evaluation to address the following questions: -What is the nature and quality of the local partner arrangements, and the larger network as a whole? -What is the nature and quality of the local science literacy programs that local partners initiate, and how do they engage local participants, and develop their sense of inquiry and communication skills? First, a Designed-Based Implementation Research approach will be used for the developmental evaluation to assess the implementation process. Next, the documentation and portrayal phase will assess the benefits to youth, educators, institutions, and the field using surveys, interviews, observations of educators, and reviews of science communication efforts created by youth. Finally, the summative evaluation includes a comprehensive portfolio of evidence to document the audience impacts and an independent assessment of the project model by an Evaluation Review Board. This project will result in the creation of a robust learning community while contributing knowledge and lessons learned to the field about networks and innovative partnerships. It is anticipated that formal and informal educators will gain increased knowledge about science and literacy programs and develop skills to provide effective programs, while youth will demonstrate increased understanding of key science concepts and the ability to communicate science. Programs created by the local partnerships will serve approximately 650 educators (450 informal educators and 200 K-12 teachers) and 500 youth ages 9-18. Plans for dissemination, expansion, and sustainability will be undertaken by the sub-networks of the collaborating national organizations drawing on the 350 ASTC member institutions and nearly 200 NWP sites at colleges and universities.
This report summarizes the evaluation results from the NSF funded Eight-Legged Encounters family event that uses arachnids as a hook to draw public interests towards science. The event involves informative and hands-on activities that bridge the gap between academia and the public, extending knowledge about arachnids to children and their parents. The Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) at UNL was contracted to evaluate Eight-Legged Encounters. The data collection for this report involves five events and three audiences: adults, children, and the volunteers of the event. Two events were
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Nebraska LincolnEileen Hebets
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Madison Area Technical College, in collaboration with the Institute for Chemical Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Chemical Society (ACS) and area science centers and museums will create a national program to disseminate the Fusion Science Theater (FST) model which directly engages children in playful, participatory, and inquiry-based science learning of chemistry and physics topics.
Project STEAM aims to inspire art-interested girls to enter STEM careers through a series of activities, including summer academies that explore the biology and physics of color, science café-style presentations that feature the overlap between art and science, and the development of “kits” that can be used in informal and formal venues (Girl Scouts, science centers, and K-12 classrooms). Project research explores two questions: 1) How does an art-focused approach (STEAM) to teaching science support engagement in scientific practices such as experimentation, observation, and communication of
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University of Alaska, FairbanksLaura Conner
Stereoscopic technology (3D) is rapidly becoming ubiquitous across research, entertainment and informal educational settings. Children of today may grow up never knowing a time when movies, television and video games were not available stereoscopically. Despite this rapid expansion, the field’s understanding of the impact of stereoscopic visualizations on learning is rather limited. Much of the excitement of stereoscopic technology could be due to a novelty effect, which will wear off over time. This study controlled for the novelty factor using a variety of techniques. On the floor of an
The data collection for this project involved three audiences: (1) a post-event survey completed by participants at the 'Eight-Legged Encounters' event, (2) a club experience survey completed by middle school students in an after-school club, and (3) focus groups, observations, and end-of-course evaluations conducted with students in the BIOS 497/897 'Communicating Science through Outreach' seminar class at the University of Lincoln, Nebraska. Year two data collection was completed from September 2013 - March 2014. Appendix includes survey.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Nebraska-LincolnEileen Hebets