This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.
The Exploratorium, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Club Columbia Park (BGC) in the Mission District of San Francisco, is implementing a two-year exploratory project designed to support informal education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within underserved Latino communities. Building off of and expanding on non-STEM-related efforts in a few major U.S. cities and Europe, the Exploratorium, BGC, and residents of the District will engage in a STEM exhibit and program co-development process that will physically convert metered parking spaces in front of the Club into transformative public places called "parklets." The BGC parklet will feature interactive, bilingual science and technology exhibits, programs and events targeting audiences including youth ages 8 - 17 and intergenerational families and groups primarily in the Mission District and users of the BGC. Parklet exhibits and programs will focus on STEM content related to "Observing the Urban Environment," with a focus on community sustainability. The project explores one approach to working with and engaging the public in their everyday environment with relevant STEM learning experiences. The development and evaluation processes are being positioned as a model for possible expansion throughout the city and to other cities.
The project "Microetching of the Human Brain" endeavors to create the most comprehensive illustration of the human brain that has ever existed. Investigators will utilize reflective microetching, a process combining mathematics and optics to create an art piece that evolves based on the position of the viewer. Microetching allows the depiction of very complex brain activity at incredibly fine detail. The final piece will be a wall-sized piece of fine art experienced by a diverse population of thousands daily at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Additionally, this project is an educational opportunity for undergraduate students through direct involvement in the creation of the piece. As this project spans many scientific and artistic disciplines, students will be given an opportunity to learn about fields apart from their own, to broaden their skill set, and to learn how to communicate scientific concepts effectively. This project is a collaboration between neuroscientists, engineers, physicists, and artists to address the question of whether art can be used in the dissemination of scientific understanding to new audiences in a way that gives a visceral sense of the underlying concepts. The human brain is massively complex and challenging to portray clearly. Conveying a sense of its complexity through art may inspire an interest in the brain's scientific content and inspire a new generation of neuroscientists. To produce a piece of fine art capable of sufficient detail to depict the brain at near full complexity, the piece will be executed by a technique called reflective microetching. Microetching is a high-resolution lithographic process that patterns a microtopography of periodic ridges into the surface. These ridges are engineered to reflect a point-source illumination toward a viewer when standing at a specific angle relative to the painting. Similar to darkfield microscopy, this can yield incredibly fine detail. Additionally, the angular dependence of the light adds an extra dimension that can be used to convey time, depth, or motion as the viewer walks past. The piece will feature neurons, glia, vasculature, white and gray matter, and reflectively animated circuit dynamics between areas of the brain corresponding to neural processes involved in visual self-recognition. This will infuse the piece with additional meaning, as the circuits activated within viewers' brains will be the same that are depicted in the artwork.
To create more equitable learning opportunities for students from marginalized communities, educators can design learning experiences that help young people connect their everyday interests and knowledge to academic content. Nasir et al. synthesized research on how students use sophisticated math in everyday practices like discussing basketball, playing dominoes, and selling candy. Then they explain how learning improves when varied student experiences are made relevant in informal and formal learning environments.
The Exhibit Designs for Girls' Engagement (EDGE) PI poster provides the background for the research, the research questions, the steps we are taking to answer those questions, our audience and deliverables, and the challenges we've faced in the first year.
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ExploratoriumToni DancstepVeronica Garcia-Luis
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Using STEM America (USA) is a two-year Pathways project designed to examine the feasibility of using informal STEM learning opportunities to improve science literacy among English Language Learner (ELL) students in Imperial County, California.
This is a poster presented at 2014 AISL PI Meeting on the project, Researching the Value of Educator Actions on Learning (REVEAL), DRL# 1321666. REVEAL Goals Develop a theoretical understanding of staff-mediated mathematical discourse at exhibits Better understand how museum educators and exhibits can foster families’ engagement in mathematical discourse related to algebraic thinking. REVEAL uses a two-phase research design to study and measure the impact of staff facilitation on museum mathematical discourse at exhibits and identify factors that influence the outcomes of these interactions
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project designed to increase informal learning opportunities for blind youth in STEM.
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National Federation of the BlindMark Riccobono
There is a movement afoot to turn the acronym STEM—which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—into STEAM by adding the arts. Science educators have finally begun to realize that the skills required by innovative STEM professionals include arts and crafts thinking. Visual thinking; recognizing and forming patterns; modeling; getting a "feel" for systems; and the manipulative skills learned by using tools, pens, and brushes are all demonstrably valuable for developing STEM abilities. And the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have gotten
This paper explores the importance of iterative design and evaluation in developing playful learning experiences in museums. According to research, play has five defining aspects: it is structured by constraints, active without being stressful, focused on process not outcome, self-directed, and imaginative (Gray 2008). For each of these aspects, we demonstrate how an iterative process of development and formative testing improved several museum exhibits, engendering more playful learning experiences for visitors. We focus on the assessment element of the design-test process, offering in detail
This research investigated gender equitable exhibit development by enhancing a geometry exhibit with several female-friendly design features and analyzing video data to determine the effects on girls' engagement and social interactions with their caregivers. The findings suggest that incorporating several female-friendly design features leads to significantly higher engagement for girls (evidenced by greater attraction and time spent). This study also looked for any unanticipated negative effects for boys after incorporating the female-friendly design features.
The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for initiatives focused on supporting learning across settings in the domains of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The conceptual framework emerges from ecological perspectives on learning that suggest a need to consider how learning develops across settings, through a range of supportive interactions and relationships (Barron, 2006; Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The framework presents initial design principles for organizing learning opportunities that connect people to practices in multiple settings. It also