RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Snow: Tiny Crystals, Global Impact is a 2,500 ft traveling exhibition about: how snow shapes and sustains life on Earth, the impacts of climate change on snow, and the importance of our collective engagement to take action. The exhibition will be installed at OMSI during winter 2021-2022 for summative evaluation and learning research.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Reflecting on the practice of storytelling, this practice insight explores how collaborations between scholars and practitioners can improve storytelling for science communication outcomes with publics. The case studies presented demonstrate the benefits of collaborative storytelling for inspiring publics, promoting understanding of science, and engaging publics more deliberatively in science. The projects show how collaboration between scholars and practitioners [in storytelling] can happen across a continuum of scholarship from evaluation and action research to more critical thinking
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michelle RiedlingerJenni MetcalfeAyelet Baram-TsabariMarta EntradasMarina JoubertLuisa Massarani
AMNH will use NOAA weather satellite data to annotate 72 high definition (HD) video time-series global cloud cover visualizations using thermal infrared brightness temperature data acquired by five geostationary satellites and joined into global mosaics at half-hourly intervals. The HD visualizations will be used in informal and formal education activities and will be made available on the Web. These media pieces will be used for informal education activities at AMNH and 28 other informal science institutions (ISI) around the United States . The target population of visitors to subscribing ISIs is currently ten million and is projected to be over 15 million by the end of the grant. The HD visualizations will be used in formal settings, as well. Fifteen schools throughout New York City with large numbers of new English Language Learners will be targeted and professional development for teachers of ELL students will be provided through programs at AMNH as well. AMNH s effort focuses on weather and climate patterns that will be visible in the cloud-data visualizations. All viewers of the media will learn about general circulation patterns and changes in phase of water associated with the hydrologic cycle.
C-RISE will create a replicable, customizable model for supporting citizen engagement with scientific data and reasoning to increase community resiliency under conditions of sea level rise and storm surge. Working with NOAA partners, we will design, pilot, and deliver interactive digital learning experiences that use the best available NOAA data and tools to engage participants in the interdependence of humans and the environment, the cycles of observation and experiment that advance science knowledge, and predicted changes for sea level and storm frequency. These scientific concepts and principles will be brought to human scale through real-world planning challenges developed with our city and government partners in Portland and South Portland, Maine. Over the course of the project, thousands of citizens from nearby neighborhoods and middle school students from across Maine’s sixteen counties, will engage with scientific data and forecasts specific to Portland Harbor—Maine’s largest seaport and the second largest oil port on the east coast. Interactive learning experiences for both audiences will be delivered through GMRI’s Cohen Center for Interactive Learning—a state-of-the-art exhibit space—in the context of facilitated conversations designed to emphasize how scientific reasoning is an essential tool for addressing real and pressing community and environmental issues. The learning experiences will also be available through a public web portal, giving all area residents access to the data and forecasts. The C-RISE web portal will be available to other coastal communities with guidance for loading locally relevant NOAA data into the learning experience. An accompanying guide will support community leaders and educators to embed the interactive learning experiences effectively into community conversations around resiliency. This project is aligned with NOAA’s Education Strategic Plan 2015-2035 by forwarding environmental literacy and using emerging technologies.
The world, all at once, has become a small world. Not only owing to TV, satellites and the Internet that allow us to jump from side to side of our planet in a click. But also owing to a phenomenon that evokes dry lands, devastating rains, tsunamis and hurricanes, torrid summers and melting glaciers: global warming. In the heated argument on this issue with so many people talking, in the past few years also artists have made their rising voice be heard. Artists-popularisers, aware of their role and of the considerable communication potential of the art medium. Because “One salient image
This proposed Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project outlines a pathway for communicating how climate change can affect a watershed area that supplies water for a specific region. The educational platforms will address the geology of the Caldera along with meteorology, ecology and hydrology. The project will focus on the ongoing scientific research processes and the impact of climate change to the physical system as well as to the citizens who depend on this resource. Partners in this endeavor include New Mexico EPSCOR, the University of New Mexico, the Valles Caldera National Preserve, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Santa Fe Productions and Tim Aydelott Productions. The project team will create a PBS television documentary in English and Spanish, including a Native American Jemez Pueblo storyteller who will describe the natural environment of the Caldera. The team will also create a YouTube channel with updatable clips, a Facebook fan page, and a climate change exhibit. The evaluation will include front-end and summative components, and will be conducted by Minnick & Associates and Elsa Bailey Consulting. The intended impact of this CRPA is to educate the public about the importance of the Caldera in securing the region's water supply and how climate changes could impact their lives. Further, aspects of the multidisciplinary science used in this research will be described with the goal of encouraging more young people from the region to choose STEM careers.
The Science Museum of Minnesota, in collaboration with six NSF-funded Science and Technology Centers (STCs) around the country, is developing several deliverables around the theme of the Anthropocene; that is, the idea that Earth has entered a new geologic epoch in which humanity is the dominant agent of global change. Deliverables include: (1) a 3,500 square-foot exhibit with object theater at the museum; (2) an Earth Buzz Web site that focuses on global change topics equivalent in design intent to the museum's popular current science Science Buzz website; (3) kiosks with Earth Buzz experiences installed in selected public venues; (4) Public programs with decision makers and opinion leaders on the implications of a human-dominated planet; and (5) youth programs and activities that engage them with the exhibit, web site, and careers in STEM. The exhibits and Web site will feature scientific visualizations and computational models adapted to public learning environments from research work being conducted by STCs and other academic research partners. First-person narrative videos of scientists and their research produced by Twin Cities Public Television now are on display in the Future Earth exhibit and also have been packaged into a half-hour program for broadcast statewide. The intended strategic impact on the field of informal STEM education is twofold: (1) explore how to accelerate the dissemination of scientific research to public audiences; (2) investigate ways science centers/museums can serve as forums for public policy dialogues.
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences project focuses on the Reedy Glacier Antarctic research of Brenda Hall (OPP 0229034) and its relevance to the residents of and visitors to Maine. Collaborators include the University of Maine, the Maine Discovery Museum, the Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain Sports (an environmentally active retail company with several stores around the state). The primary deliverable is the development of an interactive software program that presents information and experiences in a two-tiered concept approach -- on the Reedy Glacier and its connection to Maine and on the process of science. The software is being configured into kiosks at the three partnering organizations, into a DVD format for informal and formal settings to be distributed at cost and onto a University of Maine Climate Change web portal currently under separate development. The project web site will provide source code for the portal design so others may use it to create portals and modules of their own. The Maine Discovery Museum intends to create additional exhibitry on the topic with resources outside this proposal, and the Acadia National Park will use the programs in teacher education workshops.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will partner with the City of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development, Metro Regional Government, Portland Community College, Verde, and the Coalition for a Livable Future, to create a series of informal science education experiences on the theme of Sustainability. For this project, sustainability is defined in terms of a triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental needs. The project responds to calls for broad environmental education of the public in response to environmental crises (such as climate change), and specific research suggesting that even museums that do provide information about such issues rarely help their visitors learn to make the comparisons necessary to make more sustainable choices. For the public audience, the project team will create a 1,500 sq. ft. bilingual (Spanish/English) exhibition to encourage the public to develop skills in making personal choices that affect the sustainability of their community. They will also create 25-40 bilingual cell phone tags that will provide listeners who dial the phone numbers with information, personal perspectives, current STEM research, invitations to contribute ideas or vote on issues, interactive phone-based activities, and links to websites, all in service of helping them make intentional and informed personal decisions on sustainability. The cell phone tags will be located at approximately 100 locations in the Portland area, including predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, public transit locations, public works, and community projects. The team will also create a bilingual website and will offer quarterly bilingual events at the museum on the topic of sustainable living. For the professional audience, the team will create a set of tools and indicators for assessing the sustainability of exhibit-development processes, using the triple bottom line of financial, environmental, and social impacts. For example, a Green Exhibit Guide will provide resources and a checklist for exhibit development projects, and will propose field-wide standards analogous to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings. Regional workshops will engage exhibit developers, designers, fabricators, and administrators in using the tools in their own institutions. The project will create a coordinated set of resources to inform the public about the science of sustainability and to engage them in making informed choices in their daily lives, both in the museum and beyond. The topic of sustainability is timely and important, and the use of cell phones as a mobile technology linked to web resources and an exhibition constitute an innovative synergy of media to create impacts on a city-wide scale. The project serves underrepresented Hispanic audiences through its creation of bilingual materials, placement of cell phone tags, and community involvement in the development process. Finally, the project advances the ISE field in proposing and broadly disseminating a set of standards for green exhibit design, along with developing resources and tools for assessing sustainability. Created in collaboration with other organizations, this work has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of museums while providing highly visible examples of sustainable practices for visitors.
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 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Exploratorium began an exciting long-term alliance in 2009 to present climate and ocean sciences to the public. NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, and coasts using cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation, and to share its knowledge with others. Teaming up with the Exploratorium enables NOAA to explore new methods of communicating its work using the creativity and educational expertise of the museum. The partnership involves codeveloping exhibits, online media, public programs, and research about learning, and it also provides professional development opportunities for NOAA scientists. Some examples of partnership projects include the Scientists-in-Residence Program, the Wired Pier Project, the Deep-Water Dock at the Piers, and the Okeanos Explorer exhibit.