The Museums of the Rockies will develop a 2450 sq. ft. exhibit titled Landforms/Lifeforms and complementary educational materials including teacher enhancement activities, outreach trunks, and other programming. The exhibit will serve as the pivotal experience for visitors as they engage the museum's theme One Place Through All Of Time and it serve to introduce all other permanent exhibit galleries. Using the important and spectacular geological and paleontological resources of the region and the museum's collections, the exhibit will bring to life the concept of the evolution and diversification of life in response to changing geological conditions from the Precambrian to the end of the Mesozoic. Visitors will experience the Northern Rocky Mountain Region and the life supported by that region over time. Critical thinking skills of visitors will be stimulated with the purpose of enhancing their overall science literacy. The exhibit is designed to promote adult-child interaction. Special attention is being given to attracting a rural audience. Complementary programming aimed at K-12 students and teachers will be developed. The content of these activities will address the goals set forth in Montana's systemic initiative and the Systemic Teacher Excellence Preparation program. The educational materials will also be shared with member museums in the Mid-Continent University Natural History Museum Consortium.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Arthur WolfShelly WhitmanBeth MerrickBonnie Sachatello-SawyerSharon Horrigan
The Space Science Institute of Boulder, Colorado in partnership with the Franklin Institute Science Museum and the Electric Producers Research Institute will develop a 3000 sq. ft. traveling exhibit entitled Electric Space: Exploring Our Plasma Universe. Visitors to the exhibit will be introduced to the physics of the sun and the polar aurora. They will learn about the effect solar variability has on technology and humans working in space. The exhibit is divided into seven sections: Space is Not Empty; SkyWatchers; Plasma: the Fourth State of Matter; The Dynamic Sun; Planet Earth: a Great Magnet; Reaching Toward the Starts: the Heliosphere; and The Cosmic Connection. Its design is guided by the desire to create a total immersion environment that will allow visitors to explore the many realm of the plasma university from Earth's upper atmosphere to distant galaxies. It is the developers intention to demystify science by concentrating on process rather than facts, to create a stimulating informal learning environment, to reach a diverse audience, to motivate young people to pursue science as an interest and a career, and to have the exhibit serve as an interface between the scientific community and the general public. In addition to the exhibit, supplemental curriculum modules using an inquiry-based approach will be developed in cooperation with the Science Discovery Project at the University of Colorado. These materials will provide teachers, students, and parents the opportunity to explore the concepts presented in the exhibit. An extensive evaluation plan will be carried. The exhibit will open at the Maryland Science Center the summer of 1995. It will then travel to nine major US cities reaching an estimated two million adults and children who represent a great diversity of ages and education an ethnic backgrounds.
The scientific community is challenged by the need to reach out to students who have traditionally not been attracted to engineering and the sciences. This project would provide a link between the University of Michigan and the teachers and students of secondary education in the State of Michigan with an initial emphasis on southeast Michigan, through the creation of a range of computer services which will provide interactive access to current weather and climate change information. Taking advantage of a unique computer network capacity within the State of Michigan named MichNet which provides local phone ports in virtually every major city in the state, and the resources available to the university community via the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) UNIDATA program, this project would provide secondary schools with access to a state-of-the-art interactive weather information system. The real-time data available via the system, supplemented by interactive computer modules designed in collaboration with earth science teachers, will provide animated background information on a range of climate and weather related topics. While the principal objective of this project will be to provide educationally stimulating interactive computer systems and electronic weather and climate modules for application in inner city Detroit and its environs, the unique nature of the available computer networking will allow virtually every school system in the state to have access. Subsequently successful completion of this project could eventually make the same systems available to other cities and states.
Three successful marine science curricula and teacher training packages, For Sea, Mare, and Living in Water, developed by the Marine Science Center, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, will be refined and enhanced in preparation for the production of two, multimedia compact discs (CD ROM). Advances in CD ROM technology coupled with increasing accessibility to the technology, make the compact disc an effective tool for curriculum development, utilization, and distribution. The compact disc will contain all text and graphic images from the three curricular projects; and, a comprehensive indexing system allowing materials to be utilized in a variety of manners, including thematically and topically, to effect curriculum integration. Training will be provided to an existing cadre of teacher trainers to maximize the implementation of the new curriculum and CD ROM disc.
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific requests $1,317,701 over three years to implement its California pilot project to six sites around the country. Each site will establish local, self- sustaining coalitions linking science centers, astronomical institutions, school districts, and community groups. These coalitions will, with training and support from the national Project ASTRO staff, identify, link, and support the astronomer/teacher partners in their area to use the excitement of astronomy to improve the teaching and learning of science in elementary and middle school. A second strand of the project will use the Project ASTRO materials and techniques to train astronomers and teachers at national meetings outside the six sites to set up individual ASTRO partnerships on their own. Materials to be produced include a: Project ASTRO Coalition Manual; Training Manual; update to the Resource Notebook for the Teaching of Astronomy. Target audiences are students in grades 4-9.
This project is a collaboration by the Children's Museum, Museum of Science, and Franklin Park Zoo designed to provide hands-on science activities and increase interest in science as a career for children in grades 6-8 who attend community agency after school programs. Groups of 20-25 students will attend 8-week courses at each institution, rotating to all three during the year. After completing the courses, selected students will become interns for summer training and work at the institutions. The goals of the project are to offer engaging science to underserved children and motivate them to further study; to build a bridge to community groups from the three institutions; to bolster science programs at community centers through training their staff; and to create a replicable model for other science centers, children's museums and nature centers to work with community agencies and to involve parents in their children's activities. Videotapes, to be produced by WGBH-PBS will be distributed to science centers: tapes will document finding effective ways to work in the children, the particular experiences of the three institutions, and the children's experiences with and attitudes toward science. A summer institute will be held for museum professionals from other institutions.
"Atmospheric Explorations: Participatory, Computer-Based Simulations of the Weather" is a collaborative project of Augsburg College and the Science Museum of Minnesota. The purpose of the project is to enhance the interest and skills of museum visitors and students in science by providing a highly interactive exhibit environmental that allows the users considerable freedom in exploring topics in meteorology relevant to their everydays lives. The exhibits will be designed to accommodate a gender- and racially-diverse audience of national scope.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William JaspersonDavid VenneJ. Newlin
The primary purpose of the proposed grant is to support the dissemination and institutionalization of a model of educational partnerships among academic medical centers, undergraduate colleges, and local school systems. This model was created under the umbrella of AAMC's Project 3000 by 2000 . With support from SEPA, during 1994-1997 we will consolidate and extend the accomplishments we achieved under our original SEPA, 1991-1994 (SEPA-I). In 1991, the AAMC began Project 3000 by 2000 . The activities included in this proposal support Project 3000 by 2000 , but are not designed to only recruit students for medical school. Minority underrepresentation in medical schools largely is due to the same fundamental problem that causes minority underrepresentation in health-related Ph.D. programs: an insufficient number of minority students receive adequate academic preparation-especially in the sciences-prior to college. The projects proposed here are designed to address this basic problem and hence promote greater racial and ethnic diversity in all of the health sciences. Eight programmatic activities are proposed, five of which were initiated during SEPA I: (1) The annual publication of the Secondary School Science Minority Achievement Registry (S 3 MAR) , a directory of educational programs for minority students interested in the health sciences and a registry of the students participating in them; (2) NNHeSPA News , the quarterly newsletter of the National Network for Health Science Partnerships ( NNHeSPA) ; (4) An update of the Project 3000 by 2000 Technical Assistance Manual (Volume II); (5) Presentations to a wide variety of groups and strategically targeted customized data analysis. New projects include: (6) NNHeSPA On Line!, a computer bulletin board accessible through the Internet to facilitate ongoing communication among precollege, college and graduate health science educators in NNHeSPA ; (7) S 3 MAR Grapevine , a quarterly newsletter for high school stuents listed in the S 3 MAR ; (8) Intensive regional campaigns to promote health science partnerships in California, Texas, and the South-three areas of the country with large minority populations and severe problems of underrepresentation.
This award-winning website includes a comprehensive collection of standards-based, space science education materials. Site visitors can explore a variety of resources such as A Hubble Gallery, Online Explorations, Tonight’s Sky, and Star Witness News science content readings. The “For Educators” side of site includes support materials such as science background information and overview pages that provide strategies for using Amazing Space activities in educational settings.
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Space Telescope Science InstituteBonnie Eisenhamer