PBS has a long history of creating award-winning children’s media and has published a wide range of free educational apps. PBS stations often seek organizational partnerships for help in reaching families with the free digital resources they produce. One such collaboration is between WGBH and ALSC as we together introduce a new series of apps developed with National Science Foundation funding. These PEEP Family Science apps feature characters children love from the Emmy Award-winning preschool STEM series on public television, PEEP and the Big Wide World—combining brief, animated stories with
The Brains On! exploratory research study was guided by three overarching research questions:
Who is the audience for Brains On! and what are their motivations for listening to children’s science podcasts?
How are Brains On! listeners using the podcast and engaging with its content?
What kinds of impacts does Brains On! have on its audiences?
These questions were answered through a three-phase mixed-methods research design. Each phase informed the next, providing additional insights into answering the research questions. Phase 1 was a review of a sample of secondary data in the
In October 2017, the PBS NewsHour team produced a week and a half of opioid-related content, including several online explainers, which presented the opportunity for a natural experiment for the Experiments in Transmedia project.
Knology (formerly New Knowledge Organization Ltd.) conducted a two-wave research study to advance understanding of the youth audience’s knowledge and news consumption on the topic.
The first wave of the study, conducted in September 2017, provides a baseline. The content aired in October 2017, and the second wave of the study, conducted in November 2017, asked a
"PLUM RX: Researching a new pathway for bringing active science exploration to urban families" is a project that makes use of public media resources to create innovative opportunities to bring environmental science learning to the hard-to-reach audience of urban families. As part of this project, media producers at WGBH and researchers at EDC worked together to: (1) develop a new pathway for bringing active environmental science exploration to urban families with children ages 6-9; (2) expand PLUM LANDING’s media assets to support urban families and informal educators when engaging in
This report looks across multiple phases of work to discuss the PLUM Rx project’s contribution to broader knowledge about supporting children’s active, outdoor science exploration in informal, urban settings. The PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit that resulted from this work is designed for use by outdoor prescription programs and a broad range of informal education programs serving urban children and families. This report describes (1) the rationale for the design principles that guided Toolkit development, (2) the Toolkit components developed in accordance with the design principles; and
A science-based companion guide to 46 feature films—including HIDDEN FIGURES, THE MARTIAN, PRIMER, and THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT. Each film received development or distribution support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation because of its scientific content. The guide indexes each film by scientific subject matter and provides supplemental science content, meant to encourage audiences inspired by films to explore the scientific subject matter further. It also includes links to how to watch the film. The guide is available to access online or download as a PDF.
The Sloan Science & Film Teacher's Guide indexes by scientific subject matter over 50 short fiction films funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, that can be streamed for free anytime. The Guide offers an introduction, teaching framework, study questions, and additional resources. Each film is correlated with Next Generation Science Standards as well as New York City Science Standards. The Guide can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF.