What makes “making”—the next generation of inventing and do-it-yourself—worth paying attention to? In this report, we explore the three categories of makers, the ecosystem growing around those categories, the role technology plays in this ecosystem, and, finally, how business can take advantage of the opportunities this movement represents.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John HagelJohn Seely BrownDleesha Kulasooriya
A team from Michigan State University, in partnership with six science, art-science, and art museum venues around the country and with the assistance of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, is implementing an EAGER project to conduct ongoing experiments on the chemical precursors to life as exhibit experiences for visitors to these venues. The experiments, to be run over the course of several months as the exhibit travels around the country, expand on the 1950s' work of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, which continues to stimulate new investigations and publications, including experiments being conducted on the International Space Station. The experiments/exhibits share key features across the three different kinds of venues, allowing the team to study and compare the impacts on the various publics of engaging them in real-time science experiments. Two major goals are (1) to explore new ways to attract public interest in science by performing in public settings previously untried experiments on the chemical precursors to life, and (2) to investigate how the context of different kinds of venues and their visitor characteristics affect how visitors interpret the experience and what they learn. The team is also exploring how various data visualization representations can be designed to foster public interest and understanding. The intent is to develop an approach that has potential applications to other STEM content domains and expanding the reach to broader public audiences.
Advances in the life sciences - from the human genome to biotechnology to personalized medicine and sustainable communities - have profound implications for the well-being of society and the natural world. Improved public understanding of such scientific advances has the potential to benefit both individuals and society through enhanced quality of life and environmental protection, improved K-12 and undergraduate science education, greater understanding of human connections to the natural world, and more sustainable policies and regulations. Yet few systems of support exist to help life
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth Stallman BrownLaurence YoungKeegan SawyerNational Research Council
Small Matters is a scientific storytelling project in response to a supplemental funding opportunity designed to pair an NSF Center for Chemical Innovation with an Informal Science Education organization. Meisa Salaita, Director for Education & Outreach for the Center for Chemical Evolution, and Ari Daniel, independent radio and multimedia producer and science journalist, collaborated on this project designed to increase chemical literacy in the general public and promote partnerships between scientists and informal science educators. In the tradition of folklore, educators have used storytelling to stimulate students’ critical thinking skills across and within disciplines, demonstrating an improvement in comprehension and logical thinking, enhancing memory, and creating a motivation and enthusiasm for learning. Within science, storytelling allows learners to experience the how of scientific inquiry, including the intellectual and human struggles of the scientists who are making discoveries. Accordingly, our project uses multimedia and live performance to engage the public in learning about chemistry through storytelling. We have developed a series audio pieces entitled Small Matters aimed at enriching public science literacy, namely within the chemical sciences. The format of these pieces includes standard public radio narrative style, short scientist-narrated nuggets, and imaginative sonic explorations of key chemistry concepts. The stories have been disseminated through a variety of broadcast media connections, including "Living on Earth" and local Atlanta public radio station WABE. In addition to the audio-based science journalism pieces that we have been producing, we have taken the stories we uncovered and brought them to live audiences, integrating chemistry, journalism, and the arts to create a human connection between our scientists and the public. The radio pieces were woven in with performances of poetry, comedy and satire in collaboration with literary performing arts group The Encyclopedia Show to create a live variety show (May 2013). In addition, scientists identified through our production of Small Matters were trained in storytelling techniques and brought together for an evening of live storytelling in Atlanta with The Story Collider (March 2014).
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NSF/NASA Center for Chemical EvolutionMeisa Salaita
The goal of this project is to advance STEM education in Hawaii by creating a series of educational products, based on NASA Earth Systems Science, for students (grades 3-5) and general public. Bishop Museum (Honolulu HI) is the lead institution. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is the primary NASA center involved in the project. Partners include Hawaii Department of Education and a volunteer advisory board. The evaluation team includes Doris Ash Associates (UC Santa Cruz) and Wendy Meluch of Visitor Studies Inc. Key to this project: the NASA STEM Cohort, a team of six current classroom teachers whom the Museum will hire. The cohort will not only develop curricula on NASA earth science systems but also provide guidance to Bishop Museum on creating museum educational programming that best meets the needs of teachers and students. The overall goal of Celestial Islands is to advance STEM education in Hawaii through the use of NASA Earth Science Systems content. Products include: 1) combined digital planetarium/Science on a Sphere® program; 2) traveling version of that program, using a digital planetarium and Magic Planet; 3) curricula; 4) new exhibit at Bishop Museum on NASA ESS; 5) 24 teacher workshops to distribute curricula; 6) 12 community science events. The project's target audience is teachers and students in grades 3-5. Secondary audiences include families and other members of the general public. A total of 545,000 people will be served, including at least 44,000 students.
This is a Broad Implementation proposal. Our goal is to create a vibrant, sustained community of practice around the established Café Scientifique New Mexico model for engaging high school teens in science, technology, engineering and math; scale-up will be accomplished via a national network of committed partners. The adult Cafe Scientifique model for engaging citizens in science has proven very effective and has been implemented widely. The interaction in a social setting with a scientist-presenter around a hot science topic is the key to the model’s success. With ISE funding, the model has been adapted by Science Education Solutions for the high school teen audience. Cafe Scientifique New Mexico, now starting its fifth year, has had documented success in providing teens with increased STEM literacy and a more realistic picture of scientists as real people leading interesting lives. Teens come to better understand the nature of science and are more likely to see the relevance of science to their lives. Scientists express strong satisfaction with the nature of our coaching and the resulting quality of their science communication. The program has been continually evaluated and improved, and is now ready for broad implementation. Intellectual Merit: Teenagers are the adult citizens and workforce of tomorrow. Teens are reaching a critical life juncture and are making choices that affect their future life style, life-long learning behaviors, and careers. Yet they are increasingly dropping out of the STEM pipeline in school. Even teens interested in STEM often know little about science and engineering careers and the nature of scientific research. Teen Cafés can play an important role in addressing these challenges. We have two major objectives: 1. Implement the Café Scientifique model of Teen Cafés in a national network of sites committed to adopting and adapting the program and validating its impacts with diverse audiences; and 2. Create a vibrant and sustainable community of practice comprised of ISE and STEM professionals interested in engaging teens in STEM through Teen Cafés. We have formed a core network of six initial partners: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Center for STEM Research, Education, and Outreach; The Florida Teen SciCafé Partnership; North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh; Science Discovery, University of Colorado; The Pacific Science Center in Seattle; and The Missouri AfterSchool Network (MASN) – Project LIFTOF. We will add two more core partners in Year 3. The core partners will join the Teen Cafe Network in a staged fashion in years 1 - 3. Each will reach sustainability over a three-year funding period. Each node has a local area network of partners consisting of organizations that will host local Cafes; scientific organizations with potential presenters; schools and other organizations for recruiting teens; and entities capable of contributing to financial sustainability. The network will provide a structure for a dynamic, growing, and sustainable community of practice to implement the Teen Café model, in which high school teens will gain skills in scientific discourse, thought, and exploration. STEM professionals will gain improved skills for communicating with public audiences and a new perspective on their research from a broader societal perspective. ISE professionals will gain capacity to adapt, implement, test, and further disseminate the Teen Café model and increased capability for preparing STEM experts to communicate effectively with teen audiences, along with tools, resources, and expertise to help them do so. Science Education Solutions will manage the project and provide the resources to support the community of practice, while continuing Cafe Scientifique New Mexico as a ninth network node. We will stimulate intensive ongoing communication of lessons learned across the network as partners start up their Cafe programs; external observers will be able to watch the program unfold. Broader Impacts: We will build capacity for serving teens and effective communication of science in the broad ISE and STEM communities by encouraging and nurturing others wishing to start a Cafe program and join the network. We have partnered with 10 large science and science education organizations, each with its own extensive network, which will allow us to further propagate the Teen Cafe Network. They are: National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), The American Institute of Physics (AIP), Science Cafés.org (to include NOVA), Science Festival Alliance, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI), Informalscience.org, Project Liftoff: Elevating Science Afterschool, ITEST Learning Resource Center, and The Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP). Each partner will also target underserved and diverse teen audiences for their programs.
This is a summary of results and evaluations of the first citizen science project awarded by the National Science Foundation to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 1992 (before the term "citizen science" was used to define public participation in scientific research and before the Internet or even computers were in widespread use). The report lists several publications and evaluation reports, none of which are available electronically as of April, 2014. For more information about these reports and the data they contain please contact Rick Bonney (RickBonney@cornell.edu).
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Cornell Lab of OrnithologyRick Bonney
This paper advocates for place-based education to guide research and design for mobile computers used in outdoor informal environments (e.g., backyards, nature centers and parks). By bringing together research on place-based education with research on location awareness, we developed three design guidelines to support learners to develop robust science-related understandings within local communities. The three empirically- derived design guidelines are: (1) Facilitate participation in disciplinary conversations and practices within personally-relevant places, (2) Amplifying observations to see
This portfolio contains the following reports: "Community Science Workshops: A Powerful and Feasible Model for Serving Underserved Youth. An Evaluation Brief"; "Community Science Workshops: Building a Bridge to Science for Urban Youth. A Descriptive Look at CSWs."; "What Do Community Science Workshops Do For Kids? The Benefits to Urban Youth."; and "CSWs by the Numbers: A Statistical Portrait of Community Science Workshops." Community Science Workshops are community-based non-profit programs that offer underserved youth living in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods a fun and safe way to
This is a collaborative research project between Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, USA and Gorno-Altaisk State University (GASU), Altai Republic, Russian Federation. In this NSF International Research Experiences for Students project MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic and work with faculty and students at Gorno-Altaisk University to conduct research related to native language use in learning ecological sciences in informal settings. Student researchers will conduct individual studies related to the project theme of science learning in ecological contexts. This project will help students learn how to conduct educational research related to the ecological learning experiences of indigenous youth (ages12-16) and the use and influence of native language in learning about environment. This research directly addresses the results of our prior NSF supported work that identified shared issues of indigenous people, natural resources and the decline of native language use among underserved populations in the Altai and Yellowstone systems. This project contributes significantly to our emerging understanding of science learning in informal settings. It addresses a unique conception of ecological learning in three dimensions; personal, community and cultural perspectives. Research and education objectives align with modern conceptualizations of informal science learning as proposed by the National Academies of Science (2009). The MSU-GASU collaboration provides a holistic view of science learning and will unite diverse intellectual resources and research efforts in unique ecological and social systems. Both the Yellowstone and Altai mountain systems are of global concern as part of worldwide natural and cultural resources impacted by pervasive development, recreation and tourism activities and climate change. The underlying theoretical foundation for learning proposed in this research project is the basis for effective approaches to enable isolated rural populations to contribute traditional knowledge and wisdom to contemporary issues related to world-wide ecological and cultural issues including global climate change. Aspects of sustainability practices that are embedded in the knowledge and social processes of both marginalized and dominant societies will be better understood and taken into consideration for future research and education activities. Research outcomes will contribute to more effective informal, place-based and experiential science learning to help empower communities and decision makers in meeting challenges of sustainability. Inevitably, we expect this work to extend our understanding of science learning related to critical natural and cultural resources and their management. An understanding of how, why and where learning takes place will help extend the US and international research and education agendas related to informal science learning, natural and cultural resource management and sustainability.
Non-technical part.
This is a collaborative research project between Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, USA and Gorno-Altaisk State University (GASU), Altai Republic, Russian Federation. In this NSF International Research Experiences for Students project MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic and work with faculty and students at Gorno-Altaisk University to conduct research related to native language use in learning ecological sciences in informal settings. Student researchers will conduct individual studies related to the project theme of science learning in ecological contexts. This project we will help students learn how to conduct educational research related to the ecological learning experiences of indigenous youth (ages12-16) and the use and influence of native language in learning about environment. Three cohorts of five MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic for eight weeks in the summers of 2013, 2014 & 2015. MSU students will comprise a research team with GASU science, education and language faculty to conduct research in the city of Gorno-Altaisk, two medium size villages such as Onguday and two small villages such as Karakol. We expect to work with youth in each setting and interview a representative sample at each site. As a research team we expect to gain a better understanding of how indigenous youth use native Altai language in informal settings to learn about environment. We expect to compare sights within the study. As part of our larger research interests in ecological learning and native people, we will conduct a similar comparative study in the Yellowstone Ecosystem with Native American youth. The studies associated with this project will add to our understanding about the extent and nature of native language use to learn science in underserved populations in very sensitive and unique ecological and cultural settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael BrodyClifford MontagneArthur BangertChristine StantonShane Doyle
Across the globe, citizen science projects are becoming increasingly poised to address social and environmental challenges and answer broad scientific questions. Although rapidly increasing in number, these projects need easy-to-use software tools for data management, analysis, and visualization to be successful. This project transforms how citizen science projects unfold locally, regionally, and globally by creating software that supports the full spectrum of project activities. It empowers projects to ask and answer their own local questions while contributing data critical to larger-scale issues. These tools will allow projects to announce training events; track volunteers; create datasheets; enter, review, analyze, and visualize data; publish reports; discover resources; integrate data; and ensure that data are contributed to repositories (e.g., DataONE, NEON, GBIF, HydroShare, and EOL). Tools will be made available to citizen science projects and will be delivered as reusable software elements for use in existing websites; as website features on CitSci.org; and as Application Programming Interface (API) services and mobile applications. The tools will expand the national reach, local appeal, computational abilities, visualization techniques, statistical analysis capabilities, and interoperability of the nations' cyber-infrastructure. Using participatory design and agile methods, the project will: (1) develop reusable software elements that citizen science organizations can embed into their own websites, (2) harden and expand the functionality and capabilities of CitSci.org through new website features, and (3) extend the APIs of CitSci.org and develop associated mobile applications to increase system and tool interoperability. The target user communities will include citizen science project coordinators. It will deliver customizable tools and services related to all project activities and engage projects across a wide array of disciplines. Project coordinators will be able to customize all tools developed to suit their specific project needs. Adoption and use of the tools developed will create a cyber-ready workforce capable of collecting, contributing, and applying high quality ecological, geophysical, social, and human health related observations to solve real-world problems. These broader impacts will help the citizen science community better understand effective models of public engagement to ensure more impactful application of citizen science to societal challenges.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gregory NewmanStacy LynnMelinda Laituri
Living Liquid is a full-scale development project that will develop and research a new genre of science exhibit that engage visitors in inquiry with large scientific datasets through interactive visualizations. Building on findings from a prior pathways project, Living Liquid will develop three interactive visualizations on a multi-touch Viz Table with a tangible user interface. Each visualization will support visitors in the exploration of a dataset provided by the project’s science partners: 1) Plankton Patterns will show how the ocean is defined by regions of microscopic life using data from the MIT Darwin Project; 2) Ocean Tracks will reveal the “highways” large marine creatures travel with data from the TOPP project at Stanford University; and 3) Genetic Rhythms will follow the activity of marine creatures’ genes in response to environmental conditions based on data from the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (C-MORE). Through an iterative process of collaborative research and development among museum professionals, educational researchers, computer scientists, marine biologists, data artists and interaction designers, this project seeks to: (1) Advance public understanding of ocean ecosystems and large data inquiry skills through the development of a Viz Table. (2) Advance STEM professionals’ knowledge of how to engage the public in inquiry with visualizations through an educational research study. (3) Increase the capacity of STEM professionals (both ISE developers and research scientists) to develop visualizations through a collaborative development process that includes graduate student training and residencies.