The youth-based ITEST proposal, Invention, Design, Engineering and Art Cooperative (IDEA), will provide 100 students in grades 8-12 from the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota with IT experiences in engineering and design. The content focus is mechanical and electrical engineering, such as product design, electronics, and robotics with an emphasis on 21st century job skills, including skills in advanced areas of microcontrollers, sensors, 3-D modeling software, and web software development for sharing iterative engineering product design ideas and maintaining progress on student product development. These technologies are practical and specific to careers in engineering and standards for technological literacy. During the three-year project period, a scaffolding process will be used to move students from exploratory activities in Design Teams in the 8th and 9th grades to paid employment experiences in grades 10-12 as part of Invention Crews. All design and product invention work will be directly connected to solving problems for local communities, including families and local businesses. For grades 8 and 9, students will receive 170 total contact hours per year and for grades 10-12, 280 contact hours per year. The participant target goal is 75% participation by girls, and African-American and Latino youth. Students participating in this project are situated within the country's most diverse urban districts with students speaking more than 103 languages and dialects. The schools targeted by this project average 84% of students receiving free or reduced price lunches, and have a population with 81% falling below proficiency in the Grade 8/11 Math MCA-II Test. To achieve the project goals of recruiting underrepresented students, and supporting academic transitions from middle and high school to college and university, the project team aggregated an impressive group of project partners that include schools, colleges, universities, and highly experienced youth and community groups, technology businesses that will provide mentoring of students and extensive involvement by parent and family services. Every partner committed to the project has a longstanding and abiding commitment to serving students from economically challenged areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anika WardKristen MurrayRachel GatesDavid Gundale
This proposal, the "Dan River Information Technology Academy (DRITA)," is a request for a three-year program for high school students from underserved populations who are interested in pursuing IT or STEM careers. The overall goal of DRITA is to provide opportunities for promising African American or Hispanic youth to (1) develop solid Information Technology skills and (2) acquire the background and encouragement needed to enable them to pursue higher education in STEM fields, including IT itself and other fields in which advanced IT knowledge is needed. A total of 96 students will be recruited over the course of the three years. Each DRITA participant will receive 500 hours of project-based content. The project includes both school-year modules and a major summer component. Delivery components will include a basic IT skills orientation; content courses in areas such as animation, virtual environment modeling, advanced networking, programming, GIS, robotics, and gaming design; externships; a professional conference/trade show "simulation," and college/career counseling. Parent involvement is an integral part of the program and includes opportunities for parents to learn from participants, joint college visits, and information sessions and individual assistance in the college admission process.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julie BrownElizabeth NilsenMaurice Ferrell
WNET is producing "The Human Spark," a multimedia project that includes a four-part television series (4 x 60 min) for national primetime broadcast on PBS, innovative outreach partnerships with museums, an extensive Web site and outreach activities, including a Spanish-language version and companion book. Hosted by Alan Alda, "The Human Spark" will explore the intriguing questions: What makes us human? Can the human spark be found in the differences between us and our closest genetic relative -- the great apes? Is there some place or process unique to the human brain where the human spark resides? And if we can identify it, could we transfer it to machines? The programs will explore these questions through presenting cutting-edge research in a number of scientific disciplines including evolution, genetics, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral science, anthropology, linguistics, AI, robotics and computing. The series will highlight opposing views within each field, and the interdisciplinary nature of science, including its intersection with the humanities. The series will develop a new innovative format, the "muse concept", which involves pairing the host with a different scientific expert throughout each program. The outreach plan is being developed with a consortium of four leading science museums, American Museum of Natural History in New York, Museum of Science in Boston, The Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, paired with their respective local public television stations. An additional six museums and local broadcasters will be chosen through an RFP process to develop local initiatives around the series. Multimedia Research and Leflein Associates will conduct formative as well as summative evaluations of the series and web.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William GrantJared LipworthGraham CheddBarbara Flagg
Pulse of the Planet children's science challenge includes 150 radio programs which focus on the interaction between a select group of scientists and youths 8-11, who have been chosen from a nationwide Science Challenge which encourages children to submit questions and potential experiments to scientists. Project partners include a variety of businesses (e.g., sports manufacturers such as K2), media (e.g., internet social networks such as imbee.com, TIME for Kids, Dragonfly TV, and Hispanic Communications Network) and educational partnerships (e.g. Community Science Workshops and the National Science Teacher's Association.) Underserved participants will be reached through Celebra la Ciencia science outreach programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jim Metzner
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will partner with The Exploratorium and with three smaller science museums that have strong connections to rural and Spanish-speaking populations in Texas: Discovery Science Place, Loredo Children's Museum, and Science Spectrum to develop TexNET, a four-year project modeled on the Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-based Teaching (ExNET). TexNET builds on lessons learned from past exhibit outreach models and addresses the needs of small, rural partners for exhibits and capacity-building workshops. Each small museum partner will host a set of ten exhibits for one year. Exhibit topics are 1) motion, 2) weather and 3) sound. Workshops focus on inquiry learning techniques, science content, programming and workshop design, as well as the institutional needs of each partner. Based on feedback from formative evaluation, the project added three additional partners in its final year, the Children's Museum of Houston, the Austin Children's Museum, and the Don Herrington Discovery Center, and focused its remaining year on building institutional capacity around tinkering. Inverness Research Associates will conduct the project evaluation. They will examine the success of this project by looking at the effectiveness of the TexNET model, the success of the individual exhibit elements to engage rural communities, the effectiveness with which this project has enhanced the abilities of local rural communities to sustain their own educational improvements and the effectiveness of the training components in increasing the capabilities of the local museums to serve their rural audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlie WalterSamuel DeanJoe HastingsRobert Lindsey
TERC is partnering with the Toxics Action Center to enhance the capacity of environmental organizations to teach mathematical literacy skills to low-income citizens, mostly women of color. Secondary collaborators include four environmental organizations around the country. The project is (1) developing math- and statistics-rich educational materials that help non-scientists interpret environmental test results, (2) developing training materials that help environmental organization personnel provide quantitative literacy training to citizens, (3) helping environmental organizations institutionalize project resources, and (4) evaluating the impact of project activities on environmental organizers, community members, and the general public. Project deliverables include bilingual, print- and web-based instructional materials (including videos) for environmental organizations to use with staff and community members; training sessions to create a cadre of environmental organization leaders who can conduct environment-focused, math training workshops; a communications toolkit for dissemination to journalists who cover environmental issues; and a resource-rich project web site.
The Children's Museum of San Jose, in collaboration with developmental psychology researchers at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) and science and education staff of the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), is conducting a 48-month long project that focuses on children's use of evidence to construct scientific explanations. Key deliverables are: a 2,300 square-foot paleontology exhibit with an Evidence Central area three "evidence hubs" at the Children's Museum of San Jose, an educational Web site developed by UCMP, research on children's use of evidence conducted by Maureen Callanan's research group at UCSC, a "state of the children's museum field" study on varieties of perspectives on "science" and "evidence," and professional development experiences for staff at children's museums. Additional partners include the children's museums in Austin, TX, Madison, WI, and Providence, RI and local Vietnamese and Latino organizations in the museum's neighborhood. Randi Korn & Associates will conduct the program summative evaluation process and the "state of the field" study. The project identifies and will work to address two specific needs in the field: (a) a clearer sense of the developmental progression of children's understanding of evidence, and (b) a rigorous and systematic investigation of children's open-ended reasoning about evidence in a rich content domain (paleontology). The strategic impact goal is to build capacity in children's museums, enabling them to offer more evidence-based science learning experiences for their visitors.
Building Demand for Math Literacy is a comprehensive project designed to increase arithmetic and algebraic mathematical competency among underserved youth, as well as high school and college students trained as Math Literacy Workers. This project builds on the success of the nationally renowned Algebra Project that is designed to foster mathematics achievement among inner city youth. Math Literacy Workers will deliver after school activities to African-American and Hispanic youth in grades 3-6. In addition to offering weekly math literacy workshops, Math Literacy Workers will also develop and implement Community Events for Mathematics Literacy and activities for families in the following cities: Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Jackson, MS; Miami, FL; Yuma, AZ; New Orleans, LA; San Francisco, CA and Newark, DE. The strategic impact will be demonstrated in the knowledge gained about the impact of diverse learning environments on mathematics literacy, effective strategies for family support of math learning, and the impact of culturally relevant software. Collaborators include the Algebra Project, the TIZ Media Foundation, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, as well as a host of community-based and educational partners. The project deliverables consist of a corps of trained Math Literacy Workers, workshops for youth, training materials and multimedia learning modules. It is anticipated this project will impact over 4,000 youth in grades 3-6, 700 high school and college students, and almost 4,000 family and community participants.
The New York Hall of Science is overseeing a complex, four-year applied research and traveling exhibit development project on "precursor concepts" to the theory of evolution. These concepts pertain to key ideas about life -- variation, inheritance, selection, and time (VIST) -- and are organized around the principle that living things change over time. The central research question is: Can informal, museum-based interventions prepare young children (5 -12) to understand the scientific basis of evolution by targeting their intuitive pre-evolutionary concepts? The work involves many collaborators -- museum personnel around the country, university researchers, exhibit designers and evaluators, web designers, the Association of Science-Technology Centers and a number of advisors in the biological sciences, psychology and in informal and formal education. The products include applied research studies that will add to the conceptual change knowledge base in cognitive psychology, a 1,000 square-foot exhibit plus discovery boxes, a section on the UC-Berkeley Understanding Evolution web site, extensive on site and online staff training opportunities for participating museums and others, several dissemination activities including two research symposia, and bilingual (English and Spanish) exhibit materials and family guides. The project is positioned as a new model in informal science education for integrating research, development and evaluation, with applicability beyond the life sciences to other STEM fields.
This project is a multimedia initiative designed to increase the public and youth understanding of how scientists work. Deliverables include "Pulse of the Planet" radio programs in both English and Spanish; related web news features and photo galleries at National Geographic.com; and formative and summative evaluations of the project. The project will select 27 scientists and citizen scientists (7 of them Latinos) to provide first-person "insider" stories of scientific endeavor using the "audio diary" format. They will be provided with minidisk field recording kits and digital cameras and given hands-on training by the PI. Excerpts from their diaries will be used on the nationally broadcast radio programs and website. Some of these will feature citizen science projects. The project's partners include The Self-Reliance Foundation and the Hispanic Radio Network that will produce Spanish-language adaptations of Pulse of the Planet programs; the National Geographic will create editorial features for its news website; and Citizen Science project partners including Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, and Earthwatch, among others will encourage direct participation in projects linked to the radio and web information. It is estimated that 1.25 million people will hear each of the radio programs and 50,000 unique visitors will read the stories on the web site.
The Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) will collaborate with the Children's Museum of Houston, Miami Museum of Science and the New California Media (an association of over 500 ethnic media organizations) to provide youth ages 7-10 with standards-based science and math activities using newpapers as a vehicle. Mathematics and science challenges, already field-tested by the LHS, are presented as educational inserts using cartoons, on a weekly or monthly basis. The content to be addressed includes numbers and operations, algebra, geometry, science as inquiry and life science through engaging formats in Spanish-language newspapers. While building on the "Newspapers in Education" program, strategic impact will be realized by demonstrating the ability of a more intensive approach to reach families of underserved and underrepresented audiences through a collaboration of print media, museums, libraries, schools and community organizations. The ultimate goal is to increase exposure to informal science education activities at museums and in Spanish-language media. Deliverables include the newspaper activities (designed for families to use at home), family sessions at local libraries, science centers, after school programs and community organizations as well as a festival and website. Promotional sessions at New California Media Expos and workshops at the Asociation of Science and Technology Centers conferences will introduce the project to media and museum partners. This project will target underserved communities in California, Texas and Florida and is estimated to reach more than 450,000 families by year three.
This project will create the infrastructure to provide Hispanic media with an ongoing source of high-quality science news tailored to meet the needs and interests of Hispanics. The proposed Hispanic Science News Service website will be a downloadable internet resource site for Hispanic print, radio and internet editors, journalists and producers to access science stories, radio capsules and science information resources. This service would be promoted through partnerships with the National Association of Hispanic Publishers, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and The Hispanic Radio. Specific media deliverables will include: Exploracion, a weekly, Spanish-language newspaper column; La Ciencia en Breve: El Universo a tu Alcance (Science News Briefs); Exploracion, a daily science radio news capsule; and uploads of science content to the Univision.com website.