The Please Touch Museum is requesting $684,602 for the development of educational resource materials in science and mathematics for four-year old children, and training for their parents and teachers in Head Start and other daycare programs. This 44 month project will develop, test, and produce six materials-based science and math activity kits, science training workshops for parents and daycare educators, and related family materials and events. It will culminate in a national dissemination program to promote more effective preschool science and math education through materials- based science inquiry and increased professional relations between educators in youth museums and daycare centers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marzy SykesRenee HenryTracey Prendergast
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 Wildlife Conservation Society is developing and implementing a five-year science program for 420 parents and 210 teachers of children in grades K-8. Linked directly with school curricula and the new National Science Education Standards, the program will bridge the gap between parents and schools, and position the Zoo as a partner and intermediary to help parents and teachers improve the quality and quantity of science education. The program consists of four interrelated components: 1) A series of workshops that will prepare the 420 parents and 210 teachers to work in teams for better and more widely available science education; 2) A series of education projects that will enable workshop participants to teach thousands of other parents and educators about the importance of science literacy, the need for active parental engagement in children's education, and the crucial role that informal science institutions play in augmenting formal science instruction; 3) A series of four Science Advocacy Fairs at the Zoo that are expected to raise the visitor's consciousness on a large scale about the above issues; and 4) A symposium for educators from schools and informal science centers in the region to disseminate successful methods for involving parents in science education.
KCTS, Seattle's PBS affiliate, is producing a series of three one-hour prime-time science education television specials starring Bill Nye. The specials will be aimed at a family audience and will be designed to promote informal science learning through an entertaining presentation of science in everyday life. Topics currently being considered for the specials are The Science of Sports, The Science of Learning, and The Science of the Future, thought other topics, such as Pseudo Science, also are being considered. Each program will maintain the entertainment values of enthusiasm for science so prominent in the Bill Nye the Science Guy series but will have a strong narrative element and air of suspense as Bill embarks on a journey of discovery, greater depth of content and presentation, and longer uninterrupted segments. The programs will be supported by a multi-pronged outreach program to reach parents and children through local PBS stations and science museums, community organizations serving disadvantaged populations and, possibly, a tie-in with a national chain of quick family restaurants. Many of the same team that created Bill Nye the Science Guy will work on this project including Bill Nye; Elizabeth Brock, Executive Producer; and Erren Gottlieb and James McKenna, producers. The production team will work with fourteen scientists and science educators who will advise the project on presentation and outreach. This group also will review and comment on all scripts and drafts of outreach material.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William NyeJames McKennaErren GottliebBurnill ClarkRandy Brinson
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 Vermont Center for the Book currently reaches over 1,000 parents in Vermont through the informal science education program, Mother Goose Asks "Why?." Through the program, exemplary children's literature and related science activities are brought to parents of preschool children in a series of four reading/discussion/activity sessions. Participants explore such questions as "What Is It?", "How Many", "How Do You Do It?", and "How Does It Grow?" and gain the expertise and confidence to introduce science to their 3-7 year old children. Many of the parents involved are reached through programs such as Head Start, Adult Basic Education, and Parent Centers. In this current project, the Vermont Center for the Book with make the program available to parents in 12 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands by equipping their state libraries and state centers for the book to conduct the program in local libraries and library service outreach sites in housing projects, on Native American reservations and in prisons. The Vermont Center will train library professionals in the content and process of the program and provide technical support as the new sites begin implementation of the program. At the same time, the Vermont Center will create another program, "You Can Count on Mother Goose," that will be based in books and activities through which parents can introduce their preschool children to basic mathematics ideas. Once created and field-tested, this new program will be disseminated to all of the participating sites.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally AndersonJoan NagyGregory DeFrancis
The Institute for Learning Innovation, Inc., requests $264,904 to pilot a project for establishing a national program to provide parents and significant other adults with support, training and materials. Also, the project goals will enable parents and other adults to become actively engaged in local science education reform and science literacy for their children. The duration of this project is eighteen months. The cost sharing for this NSF award is 24.6% of the total projected cost of the project. The Institute for Learning Innovation, Inc. will collaborate with the YWCA of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, Boys and Girls Club of Annapolis and the Arundel County Public Schools' Family Involvement Center. Project "ASK with Science" will develop a model program for implementing and disseminating science education materials to young children in underserved communities, thereby creating a grassroots, family-oriented program that can become established in the local communities served by these organizations.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science proposed to develop an outreach science and mathematics program with a parent involvement and teacher enhancement professional development component. The goals of the project are as follows: (1) to involve parents in their children's education; (2) to promote a positive attitude on behalf of parents and students toward science and mathematics; (3) to increase teachers' level of comfort in teaching science; and (4) to enhance teacher's confidence in the hands-on approach as an effective method for teaching science. The objectives for the parent component of this project are: acquaint parents with the national and state science education goals and standards; introduce parents to activities that can be done at home with children; and provide families with materials and activity sheets that can be used at home. The objectives for the teacher component of this project are: (1) to provide teachers with opportunities for increased communication with parents about science literacy for children; (2) provide professional development for teachers on the use of hands-on science activities in the classroom; and (3) to providing bilingual activity guides and kits containing materials to encourage science learning. The methods for implementing this project will be varied according to the needs of the target audiences. Parents and children will be engaged through parent workshops and multi-aged children's activities conducted at the museum by experienced science educators. The professional development for teachers' component of this project will include an extensive summer workshop, on-going training/ planning sessions during the school calendar year and session on the uses of the bilingual teaching manuals. The cost sharing for this NSF award is 46.7% of the total project cost.
Miami University, in conjunction with the National Science Teachers Association, is producing an inquiry-driven science program for use in informal settings. A key component of the program will an Internet component with a web page that complements and supports the existing Dragonfly magazine and the Dragonfly pilot television program that is being produced under a separate grant. The web page follows the same themes as the magazine and provides scientific information, an educational interactive experience, a sidebar of interesting information about topics, and advice about how users can investigate themes further themselves off-line. Other Dragonfly Quest components will include a leader's guide for educators in informal settings, and educator's companion, a Dragonfly Pocket Field Book with challenges to engage youth in investigations in the field, and Dragonfly badges, certificates, and notebooks. Dragonfly Quest clubs will be established at 200 Boys & Girls Clubs (B&GC) of America chapters nationwide. The B&GC are making a major effort to see that their chapters having computer and Internet capabilities available to the participants. Currently, approximately 40% of the 2000 chapters are linked to the Internet. The chapters with computers selected for this project each will all have at least four computers for youth - all capable of running browser software at the level Netscape 3.0. Assessment of the effectiveness of the project will be carried out at all 200 clubs. The evaluation will be conducted at 160 clubs with Internet access and 40 clubs without Internet access to evaluate the added-value component of the web pages relative to the other elements of the Dragonfly Quest package.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Christopher MyersPhyllis MarcuccioR. Hays CumminsChris WolfeCarolyn Haynes
The Maryland Science Center is planning a nationwide, traveling exhibit that would examine the scientific investigations and findings related to how and why the Titanic sank. During this planning phase for the project, two of the Maryland Science Center staff would participate in an upcoming scientific expedition to study the Titanic. They will be able to closely follow the work of the Marine Forensics Panel of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in order to understand more thoroughly the scientific processes and principles involved. The museum staff also will refine the design of the exhibit and test prototype exhibit components, themes, styles, and presentation of science.
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.
This materials development project is the result of a joint effort by Miami University and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). The project will combine the resources of the Univeristy and the publication department of NSTA, to work with schools to produce an innovative science journal for children in grades 3-6, a teacher support manual, a parent support manual, and a supporting computer network that will connect children with scientists and university science students in scientific inquiry. The journal will be the first national journal devoted to research scientists and children with an outlet for publication of scientific investigations conducted by children. Given the strong record of accomplishment of the PI and the publications division of the National Science Teachers Association, the panel feel it is likely that the Dragonfly, Dragonfly Companions. the Dragonfly Net will be a quality product and recommends funding this project at a high priority level. The Program Officer agrees with the panel and recommends funding this proposal.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Christopher MyersPhyllis MarcuccioR. Hays CumminsChris WolfeCarolyn Haynes