Twin Cities Public Television in collaboration with a committee of STEM media professionals will organize a one-day conference devoted to network building and planning for an inaugural, multi-day STEM Media Producers Conference in 2013 or 2014. Professional organizations and conferences are well-known and effective means of building community and advancing practice within specific fields. Mass media – film, television, radio, and more recently, productions for online/digital platforms – have been a primary component of NSF’s support for informal science education (ISE) for more than three decades, drawing on the skills of an extremely diverse array of professionals. Yet despite the many common issues faced by these professionals and the increasingly cross-platform nature of ISE media projects in the NSF portfolio, at present no formal organization, professional society or annual conference exists for this community. An organization of media producers and a regular, annual meeting will provide a much-needed forum to address issues of training and professional development, facilitate cross-platform collaborations, increase the use of new media technologies, and synthesize evaluations and research into coherent statements of the powerful impact of STEM media – statements that can form the cornerstone of a STEM/ISE media awareness campaign. The event will take place in conjunction with the NSF PI Meeting in March 2012, capitalizing on the momentum generated at a media convening organized by the Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) in July of 2011. The approximately 30 attendees will include participants in the July Convening and other STEM media professionals, all representing the subfields of Film, Television, Radio, and the increasingly important and diverse Online/Digital field, plus research and evaluation specialists and CAISE staff. The agenda will emphasize the potential of cross-platform collaborations and define a second agenda for a larger annual meeting that will include the larger community of STEM professionals.
The DISCUSS (NSF-ISE 0946691) project enabled the White Oak Institute to address a key problem facing the science museum field – the need for open-access specifications for digital technologies that can transform the capacities of museum giant screen (GS) theaters from analog to digital, as analog film becomes obsolete. DIGSS (the “Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications”) is an open-access, field-based set of specifications, modeled on the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) that converted commercial cinema from film to digital. DIGSS addresses the superior image, theater geometry and size needed for museum-quality immersive learning. Until DIGSS, there were no digital specs to address museums’ unique need for a truly immersive learning experience. As of April, 2012, DIGSS was officially transferred to the Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA), whose Technical Committee took over its stewardship. At least one system supplier now offers 3D and 2D giant screen digital projection systems designed specifically for DIGSS. The Peoria Riverfront Museum (opened October, 2012) included the first new DIGSS-compliant digital GS Theater (3D flat, 70’ x 52’ screen). The DISCUSS Colloquium (June 14-16, 2010, Marblehead, MA) convened experts in digital technologies, theater geometry, network economics, learning evaluation and museum leadership to develop initial consensus, resulting in the first draft of DIGSS (DIGSS 1.0). The specifications were then refined by professional comment on the DISCUSS wiki. The White Oak Institute partnered with key professional associations (GSCA, ASTC, IPS and IMERSA) to communicate DIGSS to their professional members, inviting field-wide input and review. DISCUSS collateral outcomes include: a bibliography of articles and publications related to giant screen theaters and films; a literature review of GS learning outcomes; a snapshot of the global GS theater network as of May 2010; an economic survey reporting on attendance, revenues, expenses and more; several scenarios calculating the network size needed to support the desired number of annual films; and a logic rationale that can serve as a research framework. These and other outcomes are integrated into the DISCUSS Proceedings, available with DIGSS 1.0 at http://www.whiteoakassoc.com/white-oak-institute.html.