The Pacific Science Center, in collaboration and with support from the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium, proposes a three-year program to develop and test a model for delivering mid-scale, astronomy and space-themed exhibits and programming in a shopping center environment, especially in rural locations. The program targets an audience that does not have easy access to a science center or that may not be inclined to take advantage of such a facility. The exhibits and curriculum for this project will be based on Pacific Science Center's well-tested Space Odyssey Van Program, which presently tours elementary schools in Washington State. Phase One of the project will be a test delivery of the existing exhibits and programming to two malls. Phase Two involves construction and testing of the final, larger exhibits and reworking existing programming to better fit a mall delivery environment. Phase Three takes the newly tested devices to ten malls in suburban and rural Washington.
The Space Science Institute is establishing a museum educator/theater network of eight museums around the country, pairing larger with smaller institutions. The Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific also are collaborators. The primary audience is informal science education museum educators; secondary audiences are museum visitors experiencing the to-be-developed programs. The Science Theater Education Programming System (STEPS) is a technology that has been developed by the PI and others. The team will be continuing to expand the capability of the system for this project, and the partnering museums are collaboratively creating an initial set of theater programs on astrobiology, along with a suite of training programs and communication formats for educators. The STEPS technology allows these programs to be delivered both on site and via outreach, depending on the goals of each organization. The intent is to form the core of a community of practice that would enhance the professional capacity and identities of informal educators. The theater program format is positioned as a flexible, low-cost alternative to traveling exhibits, particularly for the smaller institutions. Deliverables include: the establishment of the network, the STEPS system and programs, professional development tutorials and workshops, evaluation of the programs, and a research project and report examining the network as a community of practice and vehicle for strengthening the professional identities of museum educators.
The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) will use $286,915, or 67% of a $430,373 total project budget, over three years to develop "SkyTellers," a space science and astronomy resource for small informal (and formal) learning settings such as planetariums, museum classes, school and community libraries, youth groups and home school settings. LPI educators and science staff, in consultation with a Native American master story teller, evaluation consultants, and an advisory board, will develop 12 SkyTeller topics. Each SkyTeller topic pairs a myth or legend (primarily but not exclusively Native American) with a relevant science story (Sky Story/Science Story) that explains our current understanding of the phenomenon that the ancient tale sought to explain. Ancillary materials (illustrations produced by LPI graphics staff, images from the latest in space science missions and research) will complete the 12 story sets to be used by informal and formal science educators at a variety of venues. Extensive formative and summative evaluation (alpha and beta testing) at multiple test venues is designed to insure high quality informal science education products.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Stephen MackwellStephanie ShippJoseph Hahn
This evaluation examines visitor engagement at the “Science On a Sphere” (SOS) exhibit at Pacific Science Center, Seattle, WA. Evaluators varied characteristics of the data presentation—such as topic presented, presence of a question prompt, and image rotation—and measured the resulting visitor engagement for each of the different treatments. Furthermore, the evaluation examined visitors’ interest in the SOS exhibit, as well as the extent to which visitors connect the exhibit to surrounding exhibits. This study examines different treatments to the SOS exhibit to determine the presentation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Washington | Pacific Science CenterDylan HighDanielle AcheampongEllie KleinwortTravis Windleharth
STAR_Net brings inquiry-based STEM1 learning experiences to public libraries through two traveling exhibits, associated programming for library patrons, and a virtual community of practice for library staff and others who are interested in bringing STEM programming to libraries. In 2010, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a three-year grant to the Space Science Institute’s (SSI) National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) and its partners—the American Library Association (ALA), the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), and the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP)—to
The final evaluation report for the Citizen Sky project highlights evaluative findings from three workshops, several live online events, participant interviews, and analysis of activity and project contributions through the citizensky.org website. Appendix includes survey questions.
Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are non-technical illustrated public lectures, presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers over the years have included a Nobel-prize winner, members of the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman in history to discover a planet, an astrophysicist who is an award-winning science fiction writer, and many other well-known scientists explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is jointly sponsored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the SETI Institute, NASA's Ames Research Center, and the Foothill College Astronomy Program. In-kind funding and staff time is contributed by the sponsoring organizations. The lectures are held and videotaped in the 950-seat Smithwick Theater in Los Altos Hills. Thanks to a generous grant from an anonymous local donor, each lecture is now video and audio taped, professionally edited, and made available free of charge on a number of web sites. Videotaped lectures include: * Frank Drake discussing his modern view of the Drake Equation, * Sandra Faber on how galaxies were "cooked" from the primordial soup, * Michael Brown explaining how his discovery of Eris led to the demotion of Pluto, * Alex Filippenko talking about the latest ideas and observations of black holes, * Natalie Batalha sharing the latest planet discoveries from the Kepler mission, * Anthony Aguirre discussing how it is possible to have multiple universes, and * Chris McKay updating the Cassini discoveries about Saturn's moon Titan.
We have a wide spectrum of informal programs that include museum-based programs, afterschool programs, an NSF AISL project on science identity formation in girls, observatory visitor center programs, night-based programs, programs for Native American groups, undergraduate student-based outreach programs,and professional development for informal educations.
The scrapbook of Winifred Penn-Gaskell – celebrated aerophilatelist and collector of aeronautica –reveals a great deal about its maker and the social and political context of early flight history in Britain. It is argued here that a ‘reading’ of the book as a non-textual object offers a predictive argument for the aesthetic and cultural representation of heavier-than-air craft and pilots in the years immediately prior to the First World War. By viewing each section of the scrapbook as parts of a contingent whole, the early-twentieth century interest in performative masculinity (physical
This report presents the results of a front-end evaluation with Saint Louis Science Center visitors on the topics of Mars, Mars exploration, engineering, and robotics. This work was conducted by the Research & Evaluation Department of the Saint Louis Science Center. This front-end study was designed to inform the content development of the Bridging Earth and Mars (BEAM) exhibition, which is being developed by the Saint Louis Science Center with the support of funding from NASA. The main objective of the evaluation was to gather information from Science Center visitors about their familiarity
From October 1965 to May 1966, the Science Museum in London displayed the American spacecraft Freedom 7, the first capsule in NASA’s Mercury programme to take a human on a suborbital flight. Archival records concerning this temporary display are extensive and contain photographic sources as well as written ones. This case therefore lends itself to a study aimed at evaluating the comparative merits of these two types of records, for understanding the logic at play in the display, and for retrieving at least part of the visitors’ experience. Visual sources emerge from this comparison as
This traveling exhibit, dedicated to the Hubble Space Telescope’s imagery, provides an opportunity for visitors to contemplate the symbiotic relationship of art and scientific exploration. The exhibit was created through a unique collaboration between the Walters Art Museum, the Johns Hopkins University, and scientists and other experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Standards-based support materials are available for host institutions.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Space Telescope Science InstituteBonnie Eisenhamer