In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, The Franklin Institute Science Museum will develop, test, and pilot an exportable and replicable cyberlearning exhibit using two cutting edge technologies: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The exhibit's conceptualization is anchored in the learning research vision of the NSF-funded workshop Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future (Computing Research Association, 2005). The incorporation of VR and AR technologies into the Franklin Institute's electricity and Earth science exhibits is an innovation of traditional approaches to hands-on learning and will improve the quality of the learning experience for the primary audience of families with children and elementary school groups. The project has implications for future exhibit development and more broadly, will provide new research on learning on how to incorporate cyberlearning efforts into traditional exhibits. Fifteen participating exhibit developers across the ISE field will assist in the evaluation of the new exhibit; receive training on the design and development of VR and AR exhibits for their institutions; and receive full access to the exhibit's new software for implementation at their informal learning sites. The technology applications will be developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center--leaders in the field in Virtual Reality design and development. Front-end and formative evaluation will be overseen internally by the Franklin Institute. The Institute for Learning Innovation will conduct the summative evaluation. Research will be conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education on the effects of AR and VR technologies on exhibit learning.
The authors describe a study of programs to deepen families' scientific inquiry practices in a science museum setting. The programs incorporated research-based learning principles from formal and informal educational environments. In a randomized experimental design, two versions of the programs, called inquiry games, were compared to two control conditions. Inquiry behaviors were videotaped and compared at pretest and posttest exhibits. Family members were also interviewed about their perceptions and use of the inquiry games. Results indicated that visitors who learned the inquiry games
The Iowa Children’s Museum designed and built a new aviation exhibit, Take Flight: The Science of Aviation, that delivers NASA’s Informal Education Program to the public by providing high-quality active learning experiences for children and their families outside the formal school classroom setting. This exhibit is a vehicle through which NASA and the Museum build public understanding of the key science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines that make it possible for humans to safely fly through the atmosphere.
The Museum has developed the following products/deliverables to support our project goals.
1. Created a comprehensive Take Flight! Exhibit Guide will be developed for three different types of users: Adult and Child Museum Visitors, Educators, and Museum Staff
2. Created revised curriculum for a week-long Summer Day Camp Aeronautics program and girl and boy scout programs
3. Created additional “Fun-tivities” themed around aviation for general public
Partners include University of Iowa Science Education Center, University of Iowa Delta Center for Brain Development , University of Iowa Women in Engineering, University of Iowa Engineering School, Iowa State University Extension, Grantwood Area Education Agency, 21st Century After School Program, Iowa After School Alliance, Mississippi Valley Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts of America, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids Community School Districts, and STEM Regional Networks of Iowa.
Explore the Galaxy involved teens from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in planning for an upcoming exhibition and its interpretation. The Adler Planetarium worked with teens from several CPS high schools, with a special focus on the CPS Air Force Academy High School (AFAHS). The goals were to develop institutional partnerships and capacity for a teen docent program as well as to do formative evaluation for an upcoming exhibition. All goals were met. The Adler is now in year 4 of a comprehensive partnership with the AFAHS involving students from all four grades in field trips, activities, after-school clubs and Adler internships. The AFAHS students are now participants in an active teen internship program that places students in different Adler professional departments every summer. As well the Adler employs volunteer and paid teen interpreters on school year weekends. These relationships and programs depend on the foundations laid through the work of this grant. In the realm of exhibition design, teens also interviewed visitors about prior conceptions and interest in several areas related to cosmology including how gravity works and the size and age of the universe. Their comments influenced design of, The Universe a Walk through Space and Time, which opened in summer of 2012.
Curious Scientific Investigators (CSI): Flight Adventures immerses children and families in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. Launched in February 2012, the project supports NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), focusing on “innovative ideas to convey the fundamentals of flight, flight technology, and NASA’s role in aeronautics.” The project’s audience includes youth ages 6-18 and the Museum’s more than 1 million annual visitors of all ages. The project’s lead agency, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (Museum), developed and implemented the project in Indianapolis in partnership with the Academy of Model Aeronautics and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. The project’s goals focus on inspiring children and families to develop an interest in STEM concepts and learn about NASA’s role in science and aeronautics research and the evolution of flight, and on engaging and educating them through inquiry-based programs that facilitate understanding of STEM concepts and knowledge and NASA’s contributions to flight. Centered on an original Multimedia Planetarium Show on flight, Flight Adventures, the Museum designed several components, all of which complement the show and the messages it conveys. Among these components are an exhibit area composed of a movable wind tunnel, a display of models, low- and high-tech interactives; a Unit of Study; a TV show, Wings Over Indiana; a website; and a variety of educational and family programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jennifer Pace-RobinsonGordon Schimmel
The Aviation Adventure Center with Traveling Flight Science Lab is a three-year project developed by the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California with the intention to deliver immersive STEM programming focused on aeronautics, physical science, weather and general aviation subjects for a general museum audience and K-12 school groups. The lead institution is the Hiller Aviation Museum with additional museum partners including Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum, in Pueblo, Colorado, Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, and New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. The two goals of the project are 1) to create an in-house laboratory-style program area, called Aviation Adventure Center, permanently located within the exhibition gallery of the Hiller Aviation Museum and 2) to create a traveling flight simulation program/exhibit, called Traveling Flight Science Lab, that toured four aviation museums, listed above. During three years of the project a total of 48,530 participants were served in 4,476 programs. The project concluded in June, 2012. The Aviation Adventure Center continues as a centerpiece of Hiller Aviation Museum programming to this day.
Saturday, March 6, 2010, Marshall Barnes did an experiment in blending art and science. At an art opening at the Ekklesia Gallery in Columbus, OH, he showcased, for the first time, the original video footage from an experiment in physics that conducted during New Year's eve of that year. The experiment was to determine what would happen if an attempt were made to produce a "wall of light" that would stand in free space and consist of a number particular properties produced by a proprietary technology that Marshall had developed. Small experiments had already been conducted that produced the visible effect of an area of free standing light produced by the reflection of a strobe from a wall. The New Year's Eve test was to see if a wall of light could be produced that would fill a space in a room and have a number of particular "interesting" attributes.
In this article, Mikko Myllykoski, Experience Director at Heureka, The Finnish Science Centre, describes the exhibit design and approach of a new exhibition gallery, Heureka Classics, which honors the museum's 20th anniversary. The idea behind the exhibition was to recycle some of the museum's best exhibits within a simplistic Nordic design featuring electronic labels.
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Mikko Myllykoski
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will partner with The Exploratorium and with three smaller science museums that have strong connections to rural and Spanish-speaking populations in Texas: Discovery Science Place, Loredo Children's Museum, and Science Spectrum to develop TexNET, a four-year project modeled on the Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-based Teaching (ExNET). TexNET builds on lessons learned from past exhibit outreach models and addresses the needs of small, rural partners for exhibits and capacity-building workshops. Each small museum partner will host a set of ten exhibits for one year. Exhibit topics are 1) motion, 2) weather and 3) sound. Workshops focus on inquiry learning techniques, science content, programming and workshop design, as well as the institutional needs of each partner. Based on feedback from formative evaluation, the project added three additional partners in its final year, the Children's Museum of Houston, the Austin Children's Museum, and the Don Herrington Discovery Center, and focused its remaining year on building institutional capacity around tinkering. Inverness Research Associates will conduct the project evaluation. They will examine the success of this project by looking at the effectiveness of the TexNET model, the success of the individual exhibit elements to engage rural communities, the effectiveness with which this project has enhanced the abilities of local rural communities to sustain their own educational improvements and the effectiveness of the training components in increasing the capabilities of the local museums to serve their rural audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlie WalterSamuel DeanJoe HastingsRobert Lindsey
John Carroll University, Cleveland's International Women's Air and Space Museum and Cleveland Public Schools are partnering in a three-year project to provide a cross-age, collaborative exhibit development experience to increase young peoples' science understanding and interest in science and teaching careers. The program exposes 120+ high school and undergraduate women to the skills of educational program planning and implementation. Content includes science, technology, engineering and math related to flight, and the history and role of women in flight related careers. The project proposes a highly supportive learning environment with museum, science and education experts working alongside students at secondary and undergraduate levels to design exhibits that will meet the interest and needs of the museum, and the young children and families from Cleveland schools who visit. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the evaluation will measure change in participant career interests, content understanding and perception of science, technology, engineering and math subjects, and skill development in presenting these concepts to public audience members. Public and professional audience experiences will also be evaluated. More than nine hundred local elementary school age children, their families and 15,000 general public audience members will participate in student-designed, museum-based exhibits and programs. Deliverables include a model for university/museum partnerships in providing exhibit development and science learning experiences, three team-developed permanent exhibits about flight and women in science, a set of biographies about women and flight in DVD format and three annual museum based community events. The model program will be informed by national advisors from museum/university partners across the United States who will attend workshops in connection with the projects public presentations in years one and two. These meetings will both provide opportunities to reflect on the program progress and to develop new strategies in the evolution of the program design. Workshop participants will develop plans to implement similar programs in their home locations, impacting another layer of public audiences. The transferability of the model to these new sites will be measured in year three of the proposal. An additional 25,000 participants are expected to be impacted in the five years following the grant period. Beyond the implementation sites, the model's impact will be disseminated by the PI and participants in the program through peer reviewed journals and presentations at national conferences.
LIGO's Science Education Center is in charge of Education and Public Outreach Component for the LIGO Livingston Observatory. The three prime efforts are: (1) Professional development for teachers utilizing lab facilities and cross-institute collaborations. (2) Outreach to students K-16 (targeting 5- 9th grade), with on-site field trips to the LIGO Lab and Science Education Center, as well as off-site visits & presentations. (3) Outreach to the general public and community groups with on-site tours and Science Education Center Experience, as well as off=site visits and presentations. LIGO's Science Education Center is located at the LIGO Observatory, and has an auditorium, a classroom and a 5000 square foot exhibit hall with interactive exhibits at its disposal to complete its mission. In addition LIGO-SEC staff serve to help press and documentary film makers complete their missions in telling the "LIGO story" and encouraging budding scientists.