TEAMS, an exhibit collaborative of seven small science museums, will collaborate with academic researchers to expand knowledge about learning in informal science environments and will apply that knowledge to the creation of eight (two copies of four topics) traveling science exhibitions suitable for small museums and science centers. The research investigations build on recent findings about the nature of socio-cultural learning in museums. This close working collaboration among researchers, museum evaluators and museum exhibition designers provides an innovative opportunity to examine a model for rapid transfer of research knowledge into museum practice. Through this collaborative effort the project builds capacity within the seven small museums, helping address the larger problem of under-served audiences in rural areas. One component of the research supports design guidelines to increase effectiveness for girls visiting STEM exhibitions.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
David GoudyCharles TrautmannSarah WolfMark SinclairCatherine McCarthy
SciGirls TV Series, Website and Outreach is a transmedia project to encourage and empower girls to pursue careers in STEM. It is the first television series on PBS designed specifically for middle school girls, ages 8 - 12. The approach is based on gender research and best practices for STEM education for girls. Each episode features different real girls in active science investigations and engineering projects, while the series is unified by two appealing animated characters. The innovative format of the show forges a unique link to the Website, which is an integral part of the TV show itself. This request will support: * The production of ten new television episodes; * Enhancement of the SciGirls website on pbs.org; * Use of new technologies to create a SciGirls Smartphone app and interactive games; * Expansion of the SciGirls Museum Affiliates collaborative; a new SciGirls Mentorship Program with the AAUW and other professional organizations of scientists and engineers; and development of a new partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA. The project's strategic partners are the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) in Seattle and The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The NGCP links SciGirls with its network of 500 community-based science programs for girls, and The Franklin Institute helps coordinate the Museum Affiliates, a network of science museums that implements SciGirls outreach activities. The project will also work with the Girl Scouts of America's new "Girl Scout Leadership Experience" program which emphasizes STEM learning. The most significant web component is a social networking feature that allows girls who are interested in science to connect with peers across the nation. To date, there have been over 800,000 unique visitors and 50,000 registered "SciGirls." SciGirls TV is produced by Twin Cities Public Television and distributed by PBS Plus. Launched in February 2010, SciGirls Season One broadcasts reached over 86% of U.S. households. In addition, all programs are streamed on pbskids.org and available on iTunes free of charge. The Spanish version will be distributed on V-me. Two separate project evaluations will be conducted. Dr. Barbara Flagg will evaluate how SciGirls improves girls' knowledge and understanding of science and engineering and gives them greater confidence in their abilities in STEM. Valerie Knight-Williams will investigate the use of SciGirls outreach materials with a national network of after-school educators.
FETCH with Ruff Ruffman, produced by WGBH, is a daily half-hour PBS television series with accompanying Web and outreach activities targeted to 6- to 10-year olds. The program brings science learning to young children by uniquely blending live-action with animation, game show convention with reality programming, and humor with academics. The intended impacts of this new season are to 1) help the target audience, especially girls and minorities, develop an interest, knowledge and skills necessary to do science; 2) help kids develop the math skills and knowledge necessary to solve science and engineering problems; and 3) bring FETCH's unique brand of informal science learning to camps across the country. The requested funds will allow the project to expand the science curriculum with 20 new half-hour episodes and expand the Web site, focusing on three new science themes that highlight topics of interest to this age group: "Animal Universe," "Science of Art," and "Adventure Science." The Web site will include four new science-based Web games that will allow kids to create and post content of their own design and interact with other FETCH fans online. In addition, funds will support new educational resources for camps, including a Camp FETCH Guide. The project will continue to work with the project's established collaborators like the Boys and Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts of America, and YMCA, as well expand the outreach via new partnerships with the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University and the American Camp Association. Christine Andrews Paulsen & Associates (CAPA) will conduct summative evaluation of both the television show and the Camp FETCH Guide.
Alice is a traveling exhibition based on Lewis Carroll's beloved classic Alice in Wonderland. Alice will open in early 2001, first in San Jose and subsequently at mid-size children's museums and science centers across the country. It is projected that over the four years of traveling this exhibition around the United States, a target audience of more than two million people will view the project. The target audience for the exhibition is young children age 3-8 years old, with an emphasis on attracting girls and minorities, populations traditionally underserved in science and mathematics, together with their parents and teachers. Alice takes the link between curiosity and explanation as its rationale, using its eponymous heroine's dream-adventure as a framework for activities that will help children and adults build a shared foundation for mathematics and science literacy. The designer for the project will be Koem Liem, a recognized exhibit developer.
Under the direction of Kevin Crowley, the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh will investigate gender bias in parental explanations in informal learning settings. This project, Responding to the Gender Gap in Informal Science Education, will build on previous research at children's museums where the conversations of 338 families with children eight years and younger at sixteen different interactive exhibits were recorded and analyzed. They found that parents were almost three times more likely to use explanations when interacting with boys than girls. In this project they will conduct additional research to isolate the causes and outcomes associated with gender bias in these parental explanations and then they will develop, evaluate, and disseminate a range of low-cost methods to modify science exhibits to support parental explanation to both girls and boys. The latter will take the form of an Explanation Toolbox (XBox) which will be a set of resources to help museums construct and evaluate their own modifications to support non-biased parental explanations, with special attention paid to including explanations for the young girls, in addition to the usual conversations about manipulating the exhibits and about the visual, auditory, and tactile information produced by the exhibit. Results of the research and the toolbox will be broadly disseminated via the World Wide Web and published research reports.
The Franklin Institute and the Girl Scouts of the USA will develop, implement, and evaluate "Girls at the Center," a family outreach program that will foster girl-centered, learning within the context of the family. Partnerships will be promoted between local science and technology centers and Girl Scout Councils. It is a multi- component program that will increase girls' and their families' understanding of and interest in basic science principles and processes. Consisting of a series of family-oriented activities that coincide with the school year, science/technology centers will serve as the hosts. These museum-based activities will be supplemented by home-based activities. The activities will follow the constructivist theory of education and will cover a broad menu of scientific disciplines including ecology, energy, and human physiology as well as science careers opportunities. They will be linked to the requirements for the Girl Scout recognition (badges) program. It is building on the success of a previously NSF funded project "National Science Partnerships for Girls Scout Councils and Museum" and is expected to reach 75,050 girls and 112,575 adults in 25 sites across the US during the funding period. It will be institutionalized and will continue to operate in those sites as well as expand to other sites after the NSF-funded period.
The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, PA, in collaboration with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, the largest voluntary organization for girls in the world, requests NSF support for the National Science Partnership for Girl Scout Councils and Science Museums. This three-year project establishes partnerships between seven Girl Scout councils and six science-technology museums in six regions across the nation to promote science interest and knowledge in young American women. The project provides hands-on science activity kits and training workshops for Girl Scout leaders that assist them in conducting science activities with their troops. The science activities are directly linked to the existing Girl Scout badge program and help Brownie and Junior Girl Scouts (ages 8-11) fulfill science-related badge requirements. Each council/museum partnership will develop a specific program that involves the local underserved populations in Girl Scout science activities. during the three years of federal support, the National Science Partnership will develop a specific program that involves the local underserved populations in Girl Scout science activities. During the three years of federal support, the National Science Partnership will directly serve 11,500 leaders and 138,000 Girl Scouts. Extensive project dissemination will encourage the involvement of new partnerships and the institutionalization of the National Science Partnership by GSUSA, councils, science museums, and other formal education organizations so that the project has the potential to reach the more than 2.3 million Girl Scouts and 780,000 leaders across the United States.
SciTech Clubs for Girls, a three year old program, aims to encourage continuing interest in science and mathematics among 9-14 year-old girls. It gives them an experience in building a hands-on science exhibit for display at SciTech, a hands-on science center. Based on recent research, this program strikes at four major forces that keep girls out of the pipeline to careers in mathematics and science. Mentors by female professionals, the girls learn the safe use of tools, a principle for science, confidence in building things, and the pride of building and exhibit for use by tens of thousands of visitors yearly. Recently SciTech received a $125,000 grant from Youth ALIVE| A National Initiative of the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to continue the program for 3-years and to expand it. We will reach 20 clubs of girls each year from organizations that serve girls. The program will reach older and younger girls and their female leaders. We will also reach into the intercity of Chicago to serve more minority girls. Under the YouthALIVE| grant we will carefully evaluate results and begin to disseminate the program to other museums nationally.
NEON, Inc. a not-for-propfit corporation, proposes a television series for children, initiallyu 30 programs, suitable for daily or weekly broadcast, for home viewing via PBSA (with appropriate availability elsewhere). Program length: 30 Minutes. The premise: Three Wufniks--creatures from the cartoom world--draw their way into our world and with the help of children, undertake the adventure of finding our what it's all about. Thesek characters (played by adult professional performers in structurally sophisticated fantasy/animal costumes), move from dthe uncertain world of animated film into a range of encounters with ourrock-solid environment, get to know children and adults, scientists and laypeople, and must continually reconstruct their naive theories and their image of life on earth. The concept, designed to appeal to five- to nine-olds, combines education with entertainment (and is inclusive of other age groups, such as parents, to enhance educational effect). School and other non-broadcast distribution of program elements is planned, plus ancillary materials including computer software and print. The educational approach is interdisciplinary, with emphasis both on content and the development of positive attitudes towards science and mathematics; sub-objectives geography and history. The Principal Investigators are a television producer experienced in science programming for children, and a scientist with extensive children's educational television background. Program appeal for girls and minorities is integarl to the design; project staff will also cover a broad spectrum. Encouragement of science-and math-related audience activities is a project objective. Planning includesds extensive outreach and promotion related to the show premise.
The goal of the Science Minders project is to increase the interest and self-esteem of girls relative to science. Since many early adolescents seek economic independency by "baby-sitting," the Science Minders project will develop materials designed to permit early adolescents to teach science to small groups of young children. The materials will make the early adolescents' child-caring providing more successful and significantly enhance their attitudes and comfort with science. These materials will include a book containing informal science activities and activity resources, a child-development guide, first-aid and emergency procedures and child-care tips; and two training videos, one to demonstrate how to use the materials effectively with young children, and one to train adults to train adolescents as child-care providers. These materials will be nationally promoted and disseminated by a commercial publisher and through the national network of 400 YWCAs in 4,000 locations throughout the United States.
WGBH Educational Foundation is producing a prime time television series and informal education outreach component entitled 'A Life of Science.' Each of the six one-hour programs in the series will profile a contemporary woman scientist: Lydia Villa-Komaroff, biologist; Melissa Franklin, physicist; Misha Mahowald, computational neuroscientist; Marcia NcNutt, geologist; Lynda Jordan, biochemist; and Patty Jo Watson, archaeologist. The stories will present their scientific quests and careers but also will be about scientific lives. An outreach plan, which centers around a national campaign called 'The Missing Persons Investigation,' will target two primary constituencies: girls and boys 11-14 years of age and their adult teachers and youth service community leaders. The project will serve these audiences in formal school-based settings as well as in the informal settings of community-based organizations and institutions. Beyond these immediate target groups, the outreach project will reach a broad and diverse national public through related activities including demonstrations exhibits, community campaigns at local public television stations, and media partnerships. A comprehensive promotion plan has been devised to inform the public of both the series and the outreach component of the project.
The University Museum at the University of Arkansas is conducting preliminary planning for expansion of their 1994 pilot project entitled "Women in Science." During this planning phase, the staff will meet regularly with experts and teachers to design an exhibit about non-academic female scientists in Arkansas that will travel throughout Arkansas, outline a workshop for teachers that would help them encourage their female students to participate in math and science, and develop a program that enables female scientists to work with groups of students. At the end of the three and a half month planning stage, a final report will present a plan for the exhibition, gender workshop, and scientist program which identifies personnel, gives models/prototypes, and a budget for each facet of the proposed project.