Our Center works with students from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. We work with teachers and scientists and combine our knowledge to inspire students to pursue careers in neural engineering and neuroscience. Program activities include summer research programs, curriculum development, school visits, teacher/student workshops, science festivals, and international student exchanges.
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University of WashingtonEric Chudler
Maker Corps increases the capacity of youth-serving organizations nationwide to engage youth and families in making. Diverse Maker Corps Members expand the current network of makers, mentors, and community leaders poised to lead creative experiences for youth. In the Maker Corps' second year evaluation report, we address the following questions: 1. How does Maker Corps impact the Maker Corps Members, participating Host Sites, and the audiences they serve? 2. In what ways can the Maker Corps program improve to better serve these participants and their audiences? We developed an evaluation plan with two primary methods: surveys and case studies. We surveyed all Maker Corps Members and Host Sites at multiple points during their service year. This method allowed us to get a broad look at Maker Ed's impact across the Maker Corps program. We balanced this approach by conducting case studies at three Host Sites, which allowed us to get a deeper, more specific look at Maker Ed's impact.
Situated in the shade of palm trees in the Miami, FL area, the REM Learning Center serves children aged 12 months to nine years. By having two dedicated Maker Corps Members during the summer, they could increase the number of visits children had to the "Play, Make, Share" studio, continue to experiment with different materials and facilitation strategies, and begin to build the expertise of their staff.
Science from the Start provides informal science learning opportunities for children, mainly those of pre-school age, along with support and information for their parents/carers. Activities use free or low cost materials to facilitate recreation or expansion at home and address a broad range of scientific topics, often linking with wider local, national or international science awareness events to give extra context. Science from the Start has received funding and support from the Lancashire County Council, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Society for the History of Science, the British Pharmacological Society, and STEMnet.
The Franklin Institute (TFI) engaged Insight Evaluation Services (IES) to conduct a review of TFI museum/community partnership programs from 1993 through 2014 for the purpose of identifying "lessons learned", that is the successes and challenges of working together to achieve a common goal. IES reviewed over 40 research studies and evaluation reports for fourteen programs in which TFI was a partner in a long-term collaborative relationship with one or more community-based organizations, informal learning organizations, and/or other education-oriented public service institutions, including: The
This paper argues that the "kindergarten approach to learning" – characterized by a spiraling cycle of Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect, and back to Imagine – is ideally suited to the needs of the 21st century, helping learners develop the creative-thinking skills that are critical to success and satisfaction in today’s society. The paper discusses strategies for designing new technologies that encourage and support kindergarten-style learning, building on the success of traditional kindergarten materials and activities, but extending to learners of all ages, helping them continue to
This collaborative project between Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is researching and developing a new version of the Scratch programming language to be called ScratchJr, designed specifically for early childhood education (K-2). The current version of Scratch, which is widely implemented, is intended for ages 8-16 and is not developmentally appropriate for young children. This work will provide research-based evidence regarding young children's abilities to use an object-oriented programming language and to study the impact this has on the children's learning of scientific concepts and procedures. The team will develop ScratchJr in an iterative cycle, testing it in both in the Devtech lab at Tufts and the Eliot Pearson lab school and with a wider network of early childhood partners. At the end of the three-year project, ScratchJr will have been tested with approximately 350 students in K-2, 40 parents, and 58 early childhood educators. ScratchJr will have three components: 1) a developmentally appropriate interface, with both touch screen and keyboard/mouse options; 2) an embedded library of curricular modules with STEM content to meet federal and state mandates in early childhood education; and 3) an on-line resource and community for early childhood educators and parents. The research questions focus on whether ScratchJr can help these young children learn foundational knowledge structures such as sequencing, causality, classification, composition, symbols, patterns, estimation, and prediction; specific content knowledge; and problem solving skills. This interdisciplinary proposal makes contributions to the fields of learning technologies, early childhood education and human computer interaction. ScratchJr has the potential for broad implementation in both formal and informal settings.