Poet’s House, a preeminent poetry library in New York City, will collaborate with ten public libraries and zoos across the United States to support library-zoo partnerships in five cities. The project teams will install exhibitions that use poetry as an interpretive tool to deepen visitor thinking about wildlife and conservation in each zoo. This project follows a year-long planning grant funded by IMLS and extends the success of an IMLS-funded partnership in New York City between Poets House and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo, which pioneered the installation of poetry in the zoo. The new project will create a set of models and tools for developing strong collaborations and exhibits by carefully documenting the process of building these partnerships and evaluating their impact on visitors, the community, and professional audiences.
The project will conduct a nation wide study to address three broad questions:
(1) How does the public view zoos and aquariums and how do these institutions affect STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) learning outside their walls?
(2) How do visitors experience zoos at different stages in their lives and how do zoo visits affect their knowledge and perspectives concerning environmental issues and conservation?
(3) What are the entry characteristics of visitors and how do those characteristics play out in behaviors during a visit?
The project is designed to advance understanding of how informal STEM learning emerges through the intersection of institutional pedagogy and learning goals and the characteristics of individuals and their social and cultural backgrounds. As the first institutional study that advances a field-wide research agenda, the project will map how to implement a national collaborative effort that can help refine program delivery and cooperation between zoos, aquariums and other STEM learning institutions.
The study will describe zoo and aquarium visitors based on a broad understanding of demographics, group, and individual perspectives to expand understanding of how these factors influence visitor learning and how they view the relevance of educational messages presented by zoos and aquariums. The project will result in reports, workshops and a handbook presenting findings of practical value for educators, a research platform and research tools, online discussion forums, and directions for future research. The project, led by New Knowledge Organization (NKO), will be carried out through the collaboration of NKO with other informal research organizations and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) with its 230 informal science learning institutional members. This project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings, as a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
This review of literature summarizes findings from current research on the development of empathy in childhood, and implications for developing zoo and aquarium programs that can strengthen children's sense of empathy. Key practices include: intentional framing of conversations about animals, modeling empathy - and providing opportunities for children to practice it, offering opportunities for direct interaction with animals, building children's understanding of the similarities and differences between the needs of humans and of other animals, and activating children's imagination to help them
Three accredited zoos and aquariums in the Pacific Northwest are collaborating on a project aimed at developing tools to assess program effectiveness in encouraging children's empathy towards animals. This short briefing paper outlines the team's initial work to 1) gain a shared understanding and definition of the construct (empathy towards animals) and how it develops during childhood, and 2) review existing research on the link between empathy and beneficial action towards wildlife, and 3) summarize research findings on best practices towards encouraging empathy.
The goal of this formative study was to assess the implementation and visitor engagement with the Quarters for Conservation (Q4C) program at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ). The program was launched in the fall of 2011, with the goal of providing zoo visitors with the opportunity to take an action during their visit and directly contribute to wildlife conservation by choosing where to allocate a portion of their zoo admission. Evaluation questions include 1) how are visitors engaging with this program; 2) what are participating visitors taking away in terms of understanding of WPZ
In respect of the different modes of science communication including journalism, radio, online, I would propose that the process of making exhibitions and centres dedicated to science & technology is one of the hardest creative typologies. It also provides a very different type of engagement to other modes, in that it works in real time and space with real tangible objects and responsive media. The power of the real is also extended through the direct and collective involvement of people, providing a refreshing antidote to the potential alienating nature of social media and the ever-growing
The iSaveSpecies project was created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University, in partnership with a national consortium of zoos and aquariums. A central goal of the project was designing and implementing a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation, and the inquiry and action tools created under iSaveSpecies resulted in an evolving library of exhibit interactives adapted by partner institutions to suit the particular needs of their visitors. This report focuses on the two waves of networked exhibit kiosks: the first wave
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The second wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Sustaining Life, allowing families to conduct research and learn about conservation efforts. The Toledo Zoo incorporated three research and/or action-based touchscreen kiosks in their Tembo Trail (elephant) exhibit.
In this report, we describe the impact of the kiosks to engage
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The second wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Sustaining Life, allowing families to conduct research and learn about conservation efforts. The Oregon Zoo incorporated three research and/or action-based touchscreen kiosks in their Predators of the Serengeti exhibit. In this report, we describe the impact of the kiosks to
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The second wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Sustaining Life, allowing families to conduct research and learn about conservation efforts. The Chicago Zoological Society/Brookfield Zoo incorporated two of these touchscreen-based kiosks in their Living Coast area exhibit.
In this report, we describe the impact of the kiosks
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos, museums, and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to museums, zoos, and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The second wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Sustaining Life, allowing families to conduct research and learn about conservation efforts. The Boonshoft Museum incorporated three of these touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in their Mead Westvaco Hallway and Treehouse area exhibit.
In this
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The first wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Great Apes, allowing families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field conservationists. The Pittsburgh Zoo incorporated three touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in or near their gorilla exhibit.