This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington DC. It describes the CLUES project that provides STEM education opportunities to families.
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New Jersey Academy for Aquatic SciencesBarbara Kelly
A two stage summative evaluation was conducted following the launch of the Mystic Seaport for Educators website, the final output resulting from the IMLS National Leadership grant entitled Mystic E-Port Digital Classroom project. The results of four focus groups, conducted in two phases, found consistent results suggesting that the project was successful at achieving all four goals as outlined in the original grant proposal. Appendix includes focus group protocol.
"Let's Talk" will bring together professionals who are engaged in facilitating, evaluating or studying dialogue in STEM and history-based institutions for a symposium in Summer of 2015 structured as a 'meta-conversation' about what we know about dialogue. The project addresses the lack of a generalizable body of knowledge about dialogue, the need for instructional models and theory to inform the use of Dialogue programming, and the opportunity to prepare future museum professionals. Co-PI's: Kris Morrissey and Robert Garfinkle. Key activities include: Research Synthesis Paper; Symposium of professionals across STEM and history-based museums; Development of theory-based resources.
Poster for 2014 AISL PI Meeting. The State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) are collaborating to implement the SUNY/NYAS STEM Mentoring Program, a full scale development project designed to improve the science and math literacy of middle school youth.
Funded jointly by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the MacArthur Foundation, in partnership with the and Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and Urban Libraries Council (ULC), Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums supports the planning and design of 24 learning labs in libraries and museums nationwide. The inaugural cohort of 12 sites ran from January 2012 to June 2013, and a second cohort of 12 additional sites began in January 2013 and will extend through June 2014. In addition to the primary awardees, most grants included additional institutional partners, resulting in a rich community including over 100 professionals from approximately 50 participating organizations (libraries, museums, universities, and community-based organizations). The labs are intended to engage middle- and high-school youth in mentor-led, interest-based, youth-centered, collaborative learning using digital and traditional media. Inspired by YOUmedia, an innovative digital space for teens at the Chicago Public Library, as well as innovations in science and technology centers, projects participating in Learning Labs are expected to provide prototypes for the field based on current research about digital media and youth learning, and build a "community of practice" among the grantee institutions and practitioners interested in developing similar spaces.
Museums continue to invest in and experiment with internet technologies and increasingly with social software environments (i.e., social networking). These technologies have the potential to lead to a number of important intellectual and social outcomes such as learning, community building, and greater public understanding of, in our case, science. It is the possibility of supporting learning in digital environments that is the focus of this research project. In our previous work, online facilitation has emerged as a big deal and perhaps determines successful online museum environments from unsuccessful environments. To study facilitation, we seek to understand facilitation styles and their outcomes in two distinct but representative museum environments. The first, Science Buzz at Science Museum of Minnesota, is a popular website identified by the field to be exemplary because of its educational value and its use of Web 2.0 functionality. The second case is the more distributed use of social software at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (MLS). Instead of creating learning platforms that are hosted internally, MLS is experimenting with building learning communities where people are already gathering on the web like Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube. We anticipate being able to identify clear, replicable facilitation styles and to identify outcomes associated with those styles.
Researchers at Michigan State University, University of Washington, Science Museum of Minnesota, and Museum of Life and Science found that there are clear indicators of learning in Science Buzz (www.sciencebuzz.org), the online museum environment studied as part of the Take 2 project. People who participate in conversations through the Buzz blog demonstrate an interest in science, and they leverage their own experiences and identities in order to share science knowledge with others. Researchers utilized indicators of learning as identified in the National Academies report on Learning Science in Informal Environments. Aspects of learning that were particularly important for an online environment like Science Buzz were interest in science, participating in science through the use of language, and identifying as someone who knows about or uses science. Researchers found that Science Buzz participants had a strong interest in scientific issues, utilized argumentation strategies--an important scientific practice--and identified with the importance of science in their lives. In particular: (1) Interest in scientific issues, caring about scientific issues, identifying personally with scientific issues were commonly evident in Science Buzz; (2) There is widespread use of argumentation in relation to scientific issues, an important scientific practice, although the quality of the scientific reasoning associated with these argumentation practices varies; (3) The co-construction of identity between online participants and the host museum is a potentially powerful outcome, as it suggests that online learning environments can facilitate longer-term relationships; (4) The analytical tools developed by this project advance our ability to understand learning in online environments; (5) While some indicators of learning are present, others, such as reflecting on science or co-constructing science knowledge with others, are not present. For museums, encouraging museum staff to engage digital tools and online participants is relatively easy. However, measuring online activity with regard to complex outcomes like learning is extremely difficult. Perhaps the most useful outcome of the Take 2 project, therefore, is a tool that will enable museums to make sense of online activity in relation to powerful outcomes like learning.
The Take Two Institutional Research Study was an ethnographic case study of the contributions of Web 2.0 philosophy and technologies to museum practice and staff development at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina. It used a naturalistic methodology to investigate staff members' relationships with each other and their publics as the Museum developed and embraced a philosophy of Web 2.0 experimentation, shared authority, and co-creation. An important element in developing Web 2.0 culture at the Museum of Life and Science was leadership that encouraged experimentation and
Media MashUp (MMU) was an IMLS funded project (LG-07-08-0113 ) designed to help libraries build capacity for offering computer-based programs for youth. These programs were designed to help foster 21st Century literacy skills. The program focused on the Scratch programming language (http://scratch.mit.edu/), but also used other creative freeware programs (i.e., Audacity, Picasa, SAM animation, ArtRage). MMU was a partnership among six library systems from around the country and The Science Museum of Minnesota. Three staff members from each library participated in the program: two librarians or
The Media MashUp project is funded by the IMLS (Grant LG-07-08-0113 ) to build capacity at libraries for computer-based programs for youth that help build 21st Century literacy skills. Twenty first Century literacy skills include interactive engagement with technology, collaboration and team problem solving, taking initiative and managing time and the use of higher level processing skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org/). This project uses the Scratch programming platform (http://scratch.mit.edu/) developed at MIT to help foster youth's 21st Century literacy skills. The professional audience
This cooperative agreement will support a program of targeted outreach, professional development and national visibility for libraries and museums as important, community-based venues for student/youth game development and STEM learning. IMLS will provide financial support amounting to $100,000 for work over the Project period of January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013. as part of this key learning and development phase, we will conduct activities including targeted outreach, professional development, youth workshops, national promotion and documentation/evaluation.