A program that teaches middle-school Latinas to program their own computer games seeks ways of overcoming the growing shortfall of both Latinos and women in IT education and careers.
ConCiencia News was the first Spanish-language news service in the United States focused exclusively on health, science and environmental news, providing free of cost news stories to a diverse array of Hispanic media including 100+ newspapers and magazines, top Hispanic web portals, and almost 150 Spanish-language radio stations. Each news story features original content developed by SRF journalists, and Hispanic researchers are often features to serve as role models for the public. The summative evaluation focused on two primary audiences for the Spanish-language stories: 1) the professional
The goal of this project is to extend the impact of the nationally broadcast weekly radio program, Science Friday to a new, young audience through the various new cyber-space platforms and interactive tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life as well as new emerging social networking tools. The STEM content over the course of the two year project will include a wide variety of topics in all disciplines. The relationship between art and science will also be a focus. The NPR radio broadcasts currently reach 1.3 million listeners every week, and that audience is expected to increase. In addition to that audience, this project will target a new audience of adults under the age of 35 using various cyber platforms and new social networking tools such as Second Life, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Audiences will also be reached through remote broadcasts from science centers and art centers around the country. Over 30 science centers will use this project's web content on their own web sites, reaching their audiences as well. The web content will be translated into Spanish and widely disseminated to Hispanic audiences. Each Friday afternoon, Ira Flatow, the PI will produce and host the nationally broadcast Science Friday radio program interviewing scientists and engineers in a lively engaging format. In addition, the Science Friday digital media team will be producing and inviting others to create and post digital content and commentary on the Science Friday web site for further dissemination through Second Life, Facebook, as well as other emerging networking platforms. The evaluation will use a quasi-experimental design to study the appeal of both the radio broadcasts and the cyber-platforms with both older and younger audiences. Proposed audience impacts include increased STEM knowledge, interest, and behaviors. Partner organizations include the Self Reliance Foundation, the New York Hall of Science, LA Theatreworks, and Tribeca Film Festival.
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.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will partner with the City of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development, Metro Regional Government, Portland Community College, Verde, and the Coalition for a Livable Future, to create a series of informal science education experiences on the theme of Sustainability. For this project, sustainability is defined in terms of a triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental needs. The project responds to calls for broad environmental education of the public in response to environmental crises (such as climate change), and specific research suggesting that even museums that do provide information about such issues rarely help their visitors learn to make the comparisons necessary to make more sustainable choices. For the public audience, the project team will create a 1,500 sq. ft. bilingual (Spanish/English) exhibition to encourage the public to develop skills in making personal choices that affect the sustainability of their community. They will also create 25-40 bilingual cell phone tags that will provide listeners who dial the phone numbers with information, personal perspectives, current STEM research, invitations to contribute ideas or vote on issues, interactive phone-based activities, and links to websites, all in service of helping them make intentional and informed personal decisions on sustainability. The cell phone tags will be located at approximately 100 locations in the Portland area, including predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, public transit locations, public works, and community projects. The team will also create a bilingual website and will offer quarterly bilingual events at the museum on the topic of sustainable living. For the professional audience, the team will create a set of tools and indicators for assessing the sustainability of exhibit-development processes, using the triple bottom line of financial, environmental, and social impacts. For example, a Green Exhibit Guide will provide resources and a checklist for exhibit development projects, and will propose field-wide standards analogous to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings. Regional workshops will engage exhibit developers, designers, fabricators, and administrators in using the tools in their own institutions. The project will create a coordinated set of resources to inform the public about the science of sustainability and to engage them in making informed choices in their daily lives, both in the museum and beyond. The topic of sustainability is timely and important, and the use of cell phones as a mobile technology linked to web resources and an exhibition constitute an innovative synergy of media to create impacts on a city-wide scale. The project serves underrepresented Hispanic audiences through its creation of bilingual materials, placement of cell phone tags, and community involvement in the development process. Finally, the project advances the ISE field in proposing and broadly disseminating a set of standards for green exhibit design, along with developing resources and tools for assessing sustainability. Created in collaboration with other organizations, this work has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of museums while providing highly visible examples of sustainable practices for visitors.
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.
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) proposal is based upon Dr. Melanie Stiassny's and her associates' taxonomic and biodiversity research of the fauna in the lower Congo River. The PI has used innovative hydrologic modeling, remote sensing, habitat mapping and spatial analysis to explore and explain the biological richness of this unique river system. The CRPA request will support the production of a short documentary film that will be produced and distributed by the American Museum of Natural History's high definition video current science program Science Bulletins. The video will be captioned in both French and Spanish to make it accessible to colleagues in Africa and Spanish-speaking students throughout the United States. In addition, the AMNH will host the PI presenting a public program about her research discoveries. This live program will be rebroadcast by the New York Academy of Science via their podcast series "Science and the City."
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Melanie StiassnyEdward GardinerVivian Trakinski
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 designed to improve communication between scientists and the public focusing on the role of evidence in science. It is a two-year project that includes: 1) implementing a national survey on the public use of science web sites; 2) conducting a national Science Education Outreach Forum bringing together scientists and informal science educators; 3) implementing workshop sessions at a national conference to disseminate lessons learned from the survey and Forum; and 4) developing a prototype website on the role of evidence that will be evaluated for audience engagement and understanding. This project builds on the Exploratorium's prior NSF-funded project (ESI#9980619) developing innovative strategies using the Internet to link scientists and the public using Webcasts, annotated datasets and interactive web resources. Project collaborators include the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Palmer Station, Scripps Oceanographic Institute, FermiLab and the Society of Hispanic Physicists among others. The research and evaluation of the project has the potential for strategic impact by providing new information and models on how science centers can more effectively use the Internet to improve communication between scientists and the public while engaging learners more effectively.
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.
This planning activity will produce a prototype film on Spanish horses and conduct 10 focus group discussions to determine: audience interest, background knowledge, what viewers would like to see in this documentary, language barriers, cultural barriers, and how the film could be structured to help the public and teachers interact with children. The focus groups will target the follow groups: (1) middle school teachers, (2) elementary school teachers, (3) families with young children, (4) Hispanic families, (5) American Indian families, (6) youth ages 13-19, (7) horse lovers and those involved in horse activities, (8) senior citizens and individuals with disabilities, (9) documentary, museum exhibit and website production professionals, and (10) media and museum marketing professionals. The effort is intended to guide development of a PBS documentary, an interactive website, a companion book, and a museum exhibit on the origins, evolution, migration and impact of Spanish horses. STEM content in mathematics, genetics, paleontology, chemistry, evolution, and animal behavior, integrated with history, will be incorporated into the scripts for this diverse array of media platforms. The project also presents an opportunity to present in a very interesting and real sense the scientific process used for discovery. In addition to producing the prototype film and conducting focus group discussions, this planning grant will help to: clarify the responsibilities of all of the participants, especially the international participants; clarify the contributions from each discipline and scientist; plan in detail ways to achieve the greatest understanding with the anticipated diverse audiences; select the best geographic region, graphics, media, and animation; and establish realistic budgets and elements for production and post-production. Collaborators include: New Mexican Horse Project, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Habitat Media, University of New Mexico and Institute for Social Research, Cambridge University, Texas A &M University, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Selinda Research Associates, and PBS.
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.