This Pathways Project connects rural, underserved youth and families in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho to STEM concepts important in sustainable building design. The project is a collaboration of the Palouse Discovery Science Center (Pullman, WA), Washington State University and University of Idaho, working in partnership with rural community organizations and businesses. The deliverables include: 1) interactive exhibit prototype activities, 2) a team cooperative learning problem-solving challenge, and (3) take-home materials to encourage participants to use what they have learned to investigate ways to make their homes more energy-efficient and sustainable. The project introduces youth and families to the traditionally difficult physics concept of thermal energy, particularly as it relates to sustainable building design. Participants explore how building materials and their properties can be used to control all three types of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. The interactive exhibit prototypes are coupled with an Energy Efficient Engineering Challenge in which participants, working in cooperative learning teams, use information learned from the exhibit prototype activities to retrofit a model house, improving its energy efficiency. The project components are piloted at the Palouse Discovery Science Center, and then travel to three underserved rural/tribal communities in Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Front-end and formative evaluation studies will demonstrate whether this model advances participant understanding of and interest in STEM topics and careers. The project will yield information about ways that other ISE practitioners can effectively incorporate cooperative learning strategies in informal settings to improve the transferability of knowledge gained from exhibits to real-world problem-solving challenges, especially for rural and underserved audiences. This project will also provide the ISE field with: 1) a model for increasing the capacity of small, rural science centers to form collaborative regional networks that draw on previously unused resources in their communities and provide more effective outreach to the underrepresented populations they serve, and 2) a model for coupling cooperative learning with outreach exhibits, providing richer experiences of active engagement.
This pathways project from Boston College will test the efficacy of an intergenerational interdisciplinary hydroponics program involving curriculum development and activities at the Salvation Army's Kroc Center and the STEM Garden Institute for 4-6th grade youths and seniors. The primary research includes an examination of the efficacy of intergenerational interdisciplinary community based research. Additional goals of the hydroponic program include the examination of the ways in which urban community-based hydroponic programs foster motivation and self-efficacy, and how well youths and seniors understand the scientific inquiry process involving technology, economics and plant production. The research design includes qualitative and quantitative methods. The project will evaluate the ways in which the instructors implement the program with youth and seniors. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of the technologies associated with plant production and knowledge acquisition in the area of hydroponics from the development through the delivery of the plant products to sell at the local Farmer's Market. Interviews, focus groups and survey will be administered to seniors and youth throughout the project. The project will disseminate a science inquiry based instructional guide for informal providers and youth who are involved with informal science education programs. The guide will focus on hydroponics with an emphasis on the electromagnetic spectrum, photosynthesis, pH, and nutrients, and electrical conductivity science concepts. More than 120-150 youth and 200 seniors will participate in the hydroponics program. Additional materials on the development of economic and business planning will be developed for the use of planning and setting up a Farmer's Market retail business. The materials will be available through the Salvation Army's Kroc Center. The Kroc Center averages 500-1000 visitors per day in addition to the Center's website, which averages 1200 unique visits per day.
Project BudBurst engages people from across the United States in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. Project BudBurst participants take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first leafing, first flower, and first fruit ripening for a variety of plant species including trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, weeds and ornamentals. Project BudBurst is particularly interested in observations of native plant species. The citizen science observations are reported online to a national database. As a result valuable environmental and climate change information is being collected in a consistent way across the country. Scientists can use this data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data.
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University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Office of Outreach and EducationChicago Botanic GardenUniversity of MontanaSandra Henderson
BirdSleuth is an inquiry-based science curriculum that engages kids in scientific study and real data collection through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's citizen science projects. Each BirdSleuth module encourages students do what “real” scientists do: ask questions, collect data, look for patterns and evidence, test ideas, draw conclusions, and share results. Each module scaffolds one or more citizen science projects, and includes lesson plans, student journals, a reference guide, and a resource kit containing such tools as Focus Cards, CD-ROMs or DVDs, books, and full-color posters.
Amphibians represent an important part of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in the northeastern United States. The Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) monitors forest amphibian populations in order to track trends that may warn of ecosystem degredation and to direct conservation actions. Specifically, this monitoring program is designed to help scientists: 1. Determine changes in forest amphibian populations. 2. Establish and better understand correlations between forest amphibian population sizes and forest health. Salamander monitoring is attractive and appropriate for middle and high-school aged volunteers because activities take place in fall and spring when school is in session and because techniques are simple and straighforward.
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National Park ServiceBrian MitchellAdam Kozlowski
Monarchs in the Classroom provides a wide variety of materials and professional development opportunities for teachers, naturalists and citizens throughout the US. Two groups of behind the scenes people work together in a unique partnership to make this program successful: classroom teachers and scientists committed to sharing their expertise with the broader community. All of our programs reflect this partnership, combining real science with techniques that work for teachers, students and citizens, and promoting practices in which children learn science in ways that reflect the inquiry methods used by scientists to understand the natural world.
This article features critiques of the "Goose Bumps! The Science of Fear" exhibit at the Liberty Science Center. Brenda Cowan, Chairperson of the Graduate Exhibition Design program at SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology, Paul Orselli, Chief Instigator of Paul Orselli Workshop, and Martin Weiss, Science Interpretation Consultant at the New York Hall of Science, share their analysis of the exhibition and assess its strengths and weaknesses.
In this article, Janet Petitpas, assistant director at the Bay Area Discovery Museum and President of the Youth Museum Exhibit Collaborative, discusses how the group of North American children's museums share and manage traveling exhibits between the United States and Canada. Petitpas addresses the challenges associated with international exhibitions and offers suggestions based on her experiences.
In this article, Alissa Rupp, architect and exhibit designer at The Portico Group, reveals the importance of integrating emotional connections into exhibit designs for children. Rupp explains how exhibits can elicit strong emotional connections as well as the value of these emotional experiences for children and families.
This article describes the research effort of ASTC and Reach Advisors to explore the motivations and engagement levels of visitors to science museums. The team discovered surprising and telling information about mothers who visit with their children. This article explores the survey methodology, key findings including helpful terms to describe four types of visitors, and conclusions with recommendations.
This report presents the findings of a summative evaluation of Invention at Play, conducted by Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A), for the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Invention at Play is a traveling exhibition developed by the Lemelson Center in partnership with the Science Museum of Minnesota and is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Data collection took place at two venues: in December 2002 at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.,
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Smithsonian Institution
In early 2004 Explorit Science Center (Explorit) contracted with Visitor Studies Services (VSS) to design and conduct an evaluation of Explorit's Health In Your World Project (HIYW). HIYW is a traveling, science-based health education program for children and adults in low-income communities. HIYW features interactive experiments designed to make learning about the human body, health, and healthy choices fun and accessible. The program serves students in grades K-6, and is designed to engage parents and involve them as an integral part of the learning process. The HIYW Project was developed in