Guastavino Vaulting: Palaces for the People will be a multi-formatted project to examine the history and creative contributions of Rafael Guastavino and his family, a Spanish immigrant family of the late 19th century whose adaptations of a traditional Mediterranean construction technique transformed the urban landscape of the United States. The formats will be a web site and a major gallery exhibition that will travel to the Boston Public Library, the National Building Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.
The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum (TSHM) in partnership with the Texas Historic Commission (THC) is implementing the installation of the French ship La Belle (one of the most important shipwrecks ever discovered in North America) into the Museum for long term exhibition and interpretation. The goal of this project is to place the ship's hull into the Museum in an accessible manner that: ensures stewardship; places its preserved cargo in context; and expands our existing scope of interpretation beyond Texas. The project will continue to enhance and expand our collaboration, bringing together a particularly well qualified team of academic historians, archeologists and exhibit development practitioners who will explore not only the significance of the ship and its impact on American history, but will also formulate how these concepts, objects and story will be interpreted to the broadest possible audience.
The American Precision Museum is housed in the 1846 Robbins & Lawrence Armory, a National Historic Landmark, where in the mid to late 19th century, a group of inventors and machinists perfected the tools and techniques of precision manufacturing. Our project will create a new, long-term exhibition and related programs that explore the themes of innovation and work, and the influence of precision manufacturing on the course of American history. Highly skilled workers produced new machinery that helped drive rapid industrialization, the emergence of the United States as a world power, and the development of the consumer culture. The project will take place over three years from May 2011 to April 2014 and the new exhibition, titled Shaping America: Machines and Machinists at Work, will open in May 2014.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Carrie Brown
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
Hubble Hangouts are weekly live online talks using Google+'s video hangout feature. Hubble Hangouts feature a panel of astronomers discussing the astronomical topic of the day. Viewers are encouraged to participate by asking questions in the comments sections of YouTube and Google+, or on Twitter. Hangouts are subsequently posted to YouTube for future viewing.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Space Telescope Science InstituteBonnie EisenhamerTony Darnell
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.
This award will support the production of a two-hour documentary about one of the great milestones in the history of flight: the 1935 crossing of the Pacific Ocean by a Pan American Airways flying boat called the China Clipper. The Pacific crossing was a technological achievement that captured the world’s imagination in much the way the space program did a generation later. It also began the era of transoceanic flight – an era that would lead to profound changes in American foreign policy, commerce and the very way Americans saw the world. Produced by one of the makers of "Forgotten Genius," NOVA's NEH-funded, Emmy Award-winning biography of black chemist Percy Julian, "Across the Pacific" will combine dramatic re-enactments, interviews with scholars, and films and photographs drawn from the rich archival record about the early days of commercial aviation.
This feature documentary will join film to humanities scholarship in investigating the historical production of nuclear waste, the present character of communities living with that waste, and the combined efforts of sociologists, anthropologists, writers, and scientists to imagine how to guard this material into the 10,000-year future. Drawing on important work in environmental (land) history, ethics, and politics, as well as work on the cultural anthropology of the nuclear world, the film “Containment” examines how the Cold War transformed the American landscape, how nuclear waste compels us today—in lands across the United States and beyond—to examine our most basic views about the control and ethics of land use, and how 24,000-year half-life of plutonium pushed scientists and humanists into the Congressionally-demanded business of imagining a ten-thousand year human future in order to mark and isolate nuclear waste.
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.
In addition to books, the Millvale Community Library hosts programming for all ages, a tool lending library, and a small makerspace. The space is meant to be a resource for the community in all the ways residents need. The Maker Corps program seemed like a good fit for the library; it would provide more staff during the busy summer months, continue the maker programming it had previously received from the Children’s Museum’s Mobile MAKESHOP, and hopefully provide momentum for establishing programs like the tool lending library.
Long known for its interactive exhibits and extensive educational programming, the Science Museum of Minnesota has also established itself as a place to build and experiment with classic and emerging technology. Specifically during their Activate Saturday afternoons, a special volunteer cohort facilitates hands-on activities that visitors of all ages can access to practice an engineering-design continuum: play, tinker, make, engineer. In the summer of 2013, SMM hosted four Maker Corps Members, three of whom continue to be a part of Activate.
Our role as external evaluators is to provide Maker Ed and its stakeholders with an outside perspective on two questions. First: How does Maker Corps impact the MCMs and Host Sites that participate and the audiences they serve? Second: In what ways can the Maker Corps program improve to better serve these participants and their audiences? This report is an executive summary of our full report, in which we present a complete summary of the findings from surveys, interviews, and case studies during the 2014 Maker Corps program.
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. (http://makered.org/makercorps/) In this report of Maker Corps' second year, 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