The Year in ISE is a slidedoc designed to track and characterize field growth, change and impact, important publications, and current topics in ISE in 2018. Use it to inform new strategies, find potential collaborators for your projects, and support proposal development. Scope This slidedoc highlights a selection of developments and resources in 2018 that were notable and potentially useful for the informal STEM education field. It is not intended to be comprehensive or exhaustive, nor to provide endorsement. To manage the scope and length, we have focused on meta analyses, consensus reports
STEM Pathways is a collaboration between five Minnesota informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education organizations—The Bakken Museum, Bell Museum of Natural History, Minnesota Zoo, STARBASE Minnesota, and The Works Museum—working with Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and advised by the Minnesota Department of Education. STEM Pathways (logo shown in Figure 1) aims to provide a deliberate and connected series of meaningful in-school and out-of-school STEM learning experiences to strengthen outcomes for students, build the foundation for a local ecosystem of STEM
In support of a summative evaluation of SciGirls Season Three, Multimedia Research developed a scale to assess preteen girls’ interest in nature and science. The work was sponsored by Twin Cities PBS under NSF Grant No. 1323713. Multimedia Research developed, piloted, validated and implemented the GINSS: A nine statement Likert scale constructed to reveal girls’ strength of interest in nature and science activities. Researchers and evaluators are encouraged to use this scale to extend its application. Please email if you eventually use the scale in your research or evaluation: Flagg
This poster from the 2014 AISL PI Meeting presents Peg + Cat, a research and development project that explores the mechanisms that initiate and support innovation in early childhood education, especially by combining informal learning via public media and technology with teacher and family interactions to maximize children's math learning.
The Jackprot is a didactic slot machine simulation that illustrates how mutation rate coupled with natural selection can interact to generate highly specialized proteins. Conceptualized by Guillermo Paz-y-Miño C., Avelina Espinosa, and Chunyan Y. Bai (New England Center for the Public Understanding of Science, Roger Williams University and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth), the Jackprot uses simplified slot-machine probability principles to demonstrate how mutation rate coupled with natural selection suffice to explain the origin and evolution of highly specialized proteins. The
The Children’s Museum developed From the Blue Planet to the Red Planet: Exploring Planetary Science to provide opportunities for students in grades 4 through 8, teachers, and families to learn about Mars exploration. The Museum partnered with the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) on four teacher professional development modules related to aspects of planetary science: soil and plant study, air pressure, robotic exploration, and the comparison of Mars and Earth. Teachers who attended free workshops could bring students to the Museum for classroom and planetarium experiences. The Museum received support from Central Connecticut State University and technical advice from Phoenix Project scientists at JPL. The Museum created a timeline of Mars exploration history with video clips of milestones and an accompanying quiz kiosk. CCAT created virtual Mars drive-through experiences with which visitors could explore the planet. The Travelers ScienceDome Planetarium staff wrote, directed, and animated a full-dome planetarium program about the future study of Mars that was finished in December 2012. For over two years the Museum has sponsored free, monthly Mars Madness programs during which the general public can visit the exhibit, see a Mars-related planetarium program, and test out some of the hands-on activities developed for the school groups. The Museum hoped to reach a diverse audience, especially, those people who might otherwise not afford admission. We have produced four teacher professional development guides with hands-on activities, an exhibit for our facility, a dedicated website, and a planetarium program.
This research and development project explores the mechanisms that initiate and support innovation in early childhood education, especially in combining informal learning via public media and technology with teacher and family interactions to maximize children's math learning. Deliverables include 27 episodes of Peg+Cat, an animated math adventure series on PBS, 8 related online games and apps, summer math institutes and school-year training for preschool/Head Start teachers, and complementary activities and resources to support parent's knowledge and practice and student's engagement, interest, and learning of foundational math concepts. The research agenda will test several hypotheses regarding the strategies to extend teacher's math content knowledge and pedagogy and parent/ caregiver's understanding and valuing of math. A key question will focus on how coupled learning opportunities (professional development for teachers, transmedia, and support for families) enable and sustain children's engagement and learning in math. Formative evaluation of the media components will use focus groups of 3-5 year olds to assure develerables are engaging and accessible. The summative evaluation by Rockman et al will focus on how well the project met its overall goals including the project implementation, and impacts on Head Start teachers, parents/caregivers, and preschoolers. The project's transmedia deliverables will reach millions of preschoolers through daily PBS broadcasts and online games and apps. Fifty Head Start teachers will participate in the two-year professional development program and will be using new content knowledge and pedagogy to teach 550 Head Start children in southwest Pennsylvania and engage their parents/caregivers. The Head Start infrastructure will provide further dissemination of the project's findings and resources.
SciGirls CONNECT is a broad national outreach effort to encourage educators, both formal and informal, to adopt new, research-based strategies to engage girls in STEM. SciGirls (pbskids.org/scigirls) is an Emmy award-winning television program and outreach program that draws on cutting-edge research about what engages girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning and careers. The PBS television show, kids' website, and educational outreach program have reached over 14 million girls, educators, and families, making it the most widely accessed girls' STEM program available nationally. SciGirls' videos, interactive website and hands-on activities work together to address a singular but powerful goal: to inspire, enable, and maximize STEM learning and participation for all girls, with an eye toward future STEM careers. The goal of SciGirls is to change how millions of girls think about STEM. SciGirls CONNECT (scigirlsconnect.org) includes 60 partner organizations located in schools, museums, community organizations and universities who host SciGirls clubs, camps and afterschool programs for girls. This number is intended grow to over 100 by the end of the project in 2016. SciGirls CONNECT provides mini-grants, leader training and educational resources to partner organizations. Each partner training session involves educators from a score of regional educational institutions. To date, over 700 educators have received training from over 250 affiliated organizations. The SciGirls CONNECT network is a supportive community of dedicated educators who provide the spark, the excitement and the promise of a new generation of women in STEM careers. Through our partner, the National Girls Collaborative Project, we have networked educational organizations hosting SciGirls programs with dozens of female role models from a variety of STEM fields. The SciGirls CONNECT website hosts monthly webinars, a quarterly newsletter, gender equity resources, SciGirls videos and hands-on activities. SciGirls also promotes the television, website and outreach program to thousands of elementary and middle school girls and their teachers both locally and nationally at various events.
SETAC is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union and emerges out of the need to undertake specific action for the improvement of science education. It regards science education as among the fundamental tools for developing active citizens in the knowledge society. SETAC draws on the cooperation between formal and informal learning institutions, aiming to enhance school science education and active citizenship looking further into the role of science education as a lifelong tool in the knowledge society. On the day of the project’s conclusion, 31 October 2010, after two years of work SETAC contributes the following products and results to the field: 1. “Quality Science Education: Where do we stand? Guidelines for practice from a European experience” This is the concluding manifesto that presents the results of the SETAC work in the form of recommendations for practitioners working in formal and informal science learning institutions; 2. “Teaching and Learning Scientific Literacy and Citizenship in Partnership with Schools and Science Museums” This paper constitutes the theoretical framework of the project and innovative ways of using museums for science education and develop new modes of linking formal and informal learning environments; 3. Tools for teaching and learning in science: misconceptions, authentic questions, motivation. Three specific studies, leading to three specific reports, have been conducted in the context of the project, looking in particular into notions with an important role in science teaching and learning. These are on: Children’s misconceptions; Authentic questions as tool when working in science education; Students’ attitudes and motivation as factors influencing their achievement and participation in science and science-related issues; 4. Activities with schools: SETAC developed a series of prototype education activities which were tested with schools in each country. Among the activities developed between the partners, two have been chosen and are available on-line for practitioners to use and to adapt in their own context. These are: The Energy role game, a role game on Energy invites students to act in different roles, those of the stakeholders of an imaginary community, called to debate and decide upon a certain common problem; MyTest www.museoscienza.org/myTest, which aims to encourage students to engage in researching, reflecting and communicating science-oriented topics; 5. European in-service training course for primary and secondary school teachers across Europe. The training course is designed in such a way as to engage participants in debate and exploration of issues related to science education and active citizenship. The course is open to school teachers, headteachers and teacher trainers from all EU-member and associate countries. Professionals interested can apply for a EU Comenius grant. All the products of the project as well as information about the training course are available at the project website, some of them in more than one languages: www.museoscienza.org/setac
Maine is a rural state with unequal access to computers and information technology. To remedy this, the Maine laptop program supplies iBooks to every seventh and eighth grade student in the state. The goal of EcoScienceWorks is to build on this program and develop, test and disseminate a middle school curriculum featuring computer modeling, simple programming and analysis of GIS data coupled with hands-on field experiences in ecology. The project will develop software, EcoBeaker: Maine Explorer, to stimulate student exploration of information technology by introducing teachers and students to simple computer modeling, applications of simulations in teaching and in science, and GIS data manipulation. This is a three-year, comprehensive project for 25 seventh and eighth grade teachers and their students. Teachers will receive 120 contact hours per year through workshops, summer sessions and classroom visits from environmental scientists. The teachers' classes will field test the EcoScienceWorks curriculum each year. The field tested project will be distributed throughout the Maine laptop program impacting 150 science teachers and 17,000 middle school students. EcoScienceWorks will provide middle school students with an understanding of how IT skills and tools can be used to identify, investigate and model possible solutions to scientific problems. EcoScienceWorks aligns with state and national science learning standards and integrates into the existing middle school ecology curriculum. An outcome of this project will be the spread of a field tested IT curriculum and EcoBeaker: Maine Explorer throughout Maine, with adapted curriculum and software available nationally.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Walter AllanEric KlopferEleanor Steinberg
This is a proposal for a 3 year, $1,297,456 project to be conducted as collaboration among 5 higher education institutions and one school system across the country, with St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA serving as the lead institution (other collaborators are from Colorado School of Mines, Ithaca College, Santa Clara University, Duke University, and Virginia Beach School System). The primary goal is to attract and retain students in computer science, especially women and underrepresented minorities (including two EPSCoR states). To this end, the project will use Alice, a software program that utilizes 3-D visualization methods, as a medium to create a high-level of interest in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling among high school students, hence to build understanding of object-based programming. Such an IT focus on media and animation is aligned with national computer science standards. The project will build a network of college and high school faculty, who will offer workshops and provide continuing support during the academic year. In each site, pairs of teachers from each participating school (total = 90) will learn with university faculty via a 3-week summer program in which an introduction to using Alice for teaching will be followed by teacher development of materials for students that will then be used to teach high school students. An experimental start at one site will be followed by implementation at four additional sites and culminated with revised implementation at the sixth site (1-4-1 design).
This proposal requests partial funding for the development of a new paleobiology hall at the University of Nebraska State Museum. This project will give students and the general public a dynamic view of the period of time known as the Age of Reptiles. It emphasizes experience with interactive exhibits that focus on concepts of geologic time, how species adapt and change, relative size, scale and time, the activities of scientists as role models, and it provides reinforcement of these experiences for students in the classroom. This project includes the first use in a museum of SemNet, a software program designed for concept mapping and the representation of knowledge networks, which will be used with a videodisc. Prototypes of all interactive exhibits will undergo formative evaluation to establish maximal audience accessibility, ease of use and educational effectiveness. The exhibit concepts will be disseminated throughout the state of Nebraska through mini- versions, teachers in-service training, and scientist-in- residence programs. This project will also be used as a teaching laboratory for the University of Nebraska's graduate program in Museum Studies.