Making Stuff Season Two is designed to build on the success of the first season of Making Stuff by expanding the series content to include a broader range of STEM topics, creating a larger outreach coalition model and a “community of practice,” and developing new outreach activities and digital resources. Specifically, this project created a national television 4-part miniseries, an educational outreach campaign, expanded digital content, promotion activities, station relations, and project evaluation. These project components help to achieve the following goals: 1. To increase public understanding that basic research leads to technological innovation; 2. To increase and sustain public awareness and excitement about innovation and its impact on society; and 3. To establish a community of practice that enhances the frequency and quality of collaboration among STEM researchers and informal educators. These goals were selected in order to address a wider societal issue, and an important element of the overall mission of NOVA: to inspire new generations of scientists, learners, and innovators. By creating novel and engaging STEM content, reaching out to new partners, and developing new outreach tools, the second season of Making Stuff is designed to reach new target audiences including underserved teens and college students crucial to building a more robust and diversified STEM workforce pipeline. Series Description: In this four-part special, technology columnist and best-selling author David Pogue takes a wild ride through the cutting-edge science that is powering a next wave of technological innovation. Pogue meets the scientists and engineers who are plunging to the bottom of the temperature scale, finding design inspiration in nature, and breaking every speed limit to make tomorrow's "stuff" "Colder," "Faster," "Safer," and "Wilder." Making Stuff Faster Ever since humans stood on two feet we have had the basic urge to go faster. But are there physical limits to how fast we can go? David Pogue wants to find out, and in "Making Stuff Faster," he’ll investigate everything from electric muscle cars and the America’s cup sailboat to bicycles that smash speed records. Along the way, he finds that speed is more than just getting us from point A to B, it's also about getting things done in less time. From boarding a 737 to pushing the speed light travels, Pogue's quest for ultimate speed limits takes him to unexpected places where he’ll come face-to-face with the final frontiers of speed. Making Stuff Wilder What happens when scientists open up nature's toolbox? In "Making Stuff Wilder," David Pogue explores bold new innovations inspired by the Earth's greatest inventor, life itself. From robotic "mules" and "cheetahs" for the military, to fabrics born out of fish slime, host David Pogue travels the globe to find the world’s wildest new inventions and technologies. It is a journey that sees today's microbes turned into tomorrow’s metallurgists, viruses building batteries, and ideas that change not just the stuff we make, but the way we make our stuff. As we develop our own new technologies, what can we learn from billions of years of nature’s research? Making Stuff Colder Cold is the new hot in this brave new world. For centuries we've fought it, shunned it, and huddled against it. Cold has always been the enemy of life, but now it may hold the key to a new generation of science and technology that will improve our lives. In "Making Stuff Colder," David Pogue explores the frontiers of cold science from saving the lives of severe trauma patients to ultracold physics, where bizarre new properties of matter are the norm and the basis of new technologies like levitating trains and quantum computers. Making Stuff Safer The world has always been a dangerous place, so how do we increase our odds of survival? In "Making Stuff Safer," David Pogue explores the cutting-edge research of scientists and engineers who want to keep us out of harm’s way. Some are countering the threat of natural disasters with new firefighting materials and safer buildings. Others are at work on technologies to thwart terrorist attacks. A next-generation vaccine will save millions from deadly disease. And innovations like smarter cars and better sports gear will reduce the risk of everyday activities. We’ll never eliminate danger—but science and technology are making stuff safer.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
WGBH Educational FoundationPaula Apsell
In this full-scale research and development project, Oregon State University (OSU), Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) and the Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitors Center (HMSCVC) is designing, developing, implementing, researching and evaluating a cyberlaboratory in a museum setting. The cyberlaboratory will provide three earth and marine science learning experiences with research and evaluation interwoven with visitor experiences. The research platform will focus on: 1) a climate change exhibit that will enable research on identity, values and opinion; 2) a wave tank exhibit that will enable research on group dynamics and problem solving in interactive engineering challenges; and 3) remote sensing exhibits that will enable research on visitor interactions through the use of real data and simulations. This project will provide the informal science educaton community with a suite of tools to evaluate learning experiences with emerging technologies using an iterative process. The team will also make available to the informal science community their answers to the following research questions: For the climate change exhibit, "To what extent does customizing content delivery based on real-time visitor input promote learning?" For the wave tank exhibit, "To what extent do opportunities to reflect on and share experiences promote STEM reasoning processes at a build-and-test exhibit?" For the data-sensing exhibit, "Can visitors' abilities to explain or use visualizations be improved by shaping their visual searches of images?" Mixed-methods using interviews, surveys, behavioral instruments, and participant observations will be used to evaluate the overall program. Approximately 60-100 informal science education professionals will discuss and test the viability of the exhibit's evaluation tools. More than 150,000 visitors, along with community members and local middle and high school students, will have the opportunity to participate in the learning experiences at the HMSCVC. This work contributes to the fields of cyberlearning and informal science education. This project provides the informal science education field with important knowledge about learning, customized content delivery and evaluation tools that are used in informal science settings.
The project will develop and study the impact of science simulations, referred to as sims, on middle school childrens' understanding of science and the scientific process. The project will investigate: 1) how characteristics of simulation design (e.g., interface design, visual representations, dynamic feedback, and the implicit scaffolding within the simulation) influence engagement and learning and how responses to these design features vary across grade-level and diverse populations; 2) how various models of instructional integration of a simulation affect how students interact with the simulation, what they learn, and their preparation for future learning; 3) how these interactions vary across grade-level and diverse populations; and 4) what critical instructional features, particularly in the type and level of scaffolding, are needed. Working with teachers, the team will select 25 existing sims for study. Teachers and students will be interviewed to test for usability, engagement, interpretation, and learning across content areas. The goal will be to identify successful design alternatives and to formulate generalized design guidelines. In parallel, pull-out and classroom-based studies will investigate a variety of use models and their impact on learning. Ten new simulations will then be developed to test these guidelines. Products will include the 35 sims with related support materials available for free from a website; new technologies to collect real-time data on student use of sims; and guidelines for the development of sims for this age population. The team will also publish research on how students learn from sims.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine PerkinsDaniel SchwartzMichael DubsonNoah Podolefsky