This checklist provides a step-by-step process for preparing, leading, and ending an after school science project. The document also includes a partner checklist for science coaches and trainers when instructing adult learners.
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National Partnerships for After School Science 2
Painting with Natural Selection is an interactive installation that uses evolution and scientific experimentation to create an artistic experience. Painting is the second phase of a larger art and science project that explores the relationship between evolution and reproduction. Phase I was building custom software that simulates virtual organisms growing, reproducing and evolving - Evorepro. Evorepro was funded by a Science Education Partnership Award led by Dr. John A. Pollock at Duquesne University. Painting was funded by a Spark Award from the Sprout Fund. In Painting, kids influence the evolution of simulated bacteria by changing their virtual environment. The experience allows kids to get creative right away as they develop an intuitive understanding of the ebb and flow of evolutionary processes. The virtual organisms respond and evolve in real-time creating a visceral connection between the individual and their impact in the virtual world that leads to an awareness of our footprint in our real world and wonder at life's adaptability.
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Carnegie-Mellon UniversityJoana Ricou
This Pathways project responds to the high level of public skepticism about climate change science despite strong scientific consensus. In 2010, two George Mason University / Yale University polls became headline news in mainstream media (such as the NY Times and NPR) when they reported that 50% or more of our broadcast meteorologists and TV news directors are skeptical about global climate science. A full 30% of TV broadcast meteorologists, who are largely untrained in disciplines other than meteorology and weather forecasting, denounce anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as a hoax or a scam. Such polls strongly suggest that the general public trusts media statements over scientific facts, despite position statements acknowledging dominantly human responsibility for global warming in the past 50 years from nearly every U.S. professional society dealing with Earth sciences. Climate literacy in citizens and policy makers is essential for advancing responsible public policy on energy legislation, carbon emission reductions, and other climate change issues, and TV broadcast meteorologists have great potential for enhancing that literacy.
The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) seeks to maximize access to shared resources within projects and with public and private sector organizations and institutions interested in expanding girls’ participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the NGCP is a robust national network of more than 3,000 girl-serving STEM organizations. Currently, 31 Collaboratives, serving 40 states, facilitate collaboration between more than 12,800 organizations who serve more than 7.7 million girls and 4.4 million boys. The NGCP occupies a unique role in the STEM community because it facilitates collaboration with all stakeholders who benefit from increasing diversity and engagement of women in STEM. These stakeholders form Regional Collaboratives, who are connected to local girl-serving STEM programs. Regional Collaboratives are led by leadership teams and advisory boards with representatives from K-12 education, higher education, community-based organizations, professional organizations, and industry. NGCP strengthens the capacity of girl-serving STEM projects by facilitating collaboration among programs and organizations and by sharing promising practice research, program models, and products through webinars, collaboration training, and institutes. This is accomplished through a tested comprehensive program of change that uses collaboration to expand and strengthen STEM-related opportunities for girls and women. In each replication state, the NGCP model creates a network of professionals, researchers, and practitioners, facilitating collaboration within this network, and delivering high-quality research-based professional development. Participating programs can also receive mini-grant funding to develop collaborative STEM-focused projects. To date, over 27,000 participants have been served in 241 mini-grant projects, and over 17,000 practitioners have been served through in-person events and webinars. The NGCP’s collaborative model changes the way practitioners and educators work to advance girls’ participation in STEM. It facilitates the development of practitioners in their knowledge of good gender equitable educational practices, awareness of the role of K-12 education in STEM workforce development, and mutual support of peers locally and across the United States.
This article develops an argument that the type of intervention research most useful for improving science teaching and learning and leading to scalable interventions includes both research to develop and gather evidence of the efficacy of innovations and a different kind of research, design-based implementation research (DBIR). DBIR in education focuses on what is required to bring interventions and knowledge about learning to all students, wherever they might engage in science learning. This research focuses on implementation, both in the development and initial testing of interventions and
Backyard Mystery is an NSF-funded curriculum, focused on diseases, pathogens and careers, using interactive paper and physical activities. Content is for middle school participants in afterschool settings, like 4-H and other similar venues. The curriculum engages student interest in genetics and genomics and in the bioSTEM workforce. The curriculum storyline is placed in a familiar setting to students--the backyard--and explores fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites in a way that is engaging fun and informative. It can be tailored to specific audiences, e.g. participants interested in animal science will gain from focusing on the parasite panel. The curriculum is available in two forms: a combined lesson that brings all of the elements together in one session and another in which the content is broken out into three separate lessons. We would like to share this curriculum with facilitators and educators for both out-of-school time and classroom settings. It is available electronically and free to use. We only ask for users to complete a brief survey to give us feedback, which is helpful for NSF.
This CRPA project produced a human-like avatar exhibit for the Orlando Science Center that verbally communicates with middle and high school grade visitors, engaging them in the subjects of computer science, artificial intelligence, and engineering. Human-like characteristics include features to match the demographics of the Center's clientele and verbal communication in the English language. In addition to discussing how avatars are developed and how artificial intelligence works, the avatar image will answer questions from the visitors on selected topics, including subjects from the media models of Avatar and IBM's Watson event on Jeopardy. Considerable planning and research has gone into this project to make sure that the avatar is life-like and can engage in realistic dialog. The avatar images will resemble real individuals who have diverse demographic characteristics in order to enhance the human-computer interface. The system is designed to deal with background noise and antagonistic visitors. Evaluation at all levels (front-end, formative, and summative) will make the exhibit most effective and facilitate the goals of the project which are to inform the target audience on STEM subjects. The desire to have electronic analogs of humans has been a goal for half of a century. This project builds on prior research in this area and is one of the most sophisticated contemporary models in the field. It is anticipated that this work may contribute to future applications in education and assistance for individuals with disabilities. Moreover, engagement with the avatar may ignite curiosity among young visitors and stimulate interest in science careers.
In this paper, we present the DeepTree exhibit, a multi-user, multi-touch interactive visualization of the Tree of Life. We developed DeepTree to facilitate collaborative learning of evolutionary concepts. We will describe an iterative process in which a team of computer scientists, learning scientists, biologists, and museum curators worked together throughout design, development, and evaluation. We present the importance of designing the interactions and the visualization hand-in-hand in order to facilitate active learning. The outcome of this process is a fractal-based tree layout that
The overarching purpose of the Climate Literacy Zoo Education Network is to develop and evaluate a new approach to climate change education that connects zoo visitors to polar animals currently endangered by climate change, leveraging the associative and affective pathways known to dominate decision-making. Utilizing a polar theme, the partnership brings together a strong multidisciplinary team that includes the Chicago Zoological Society of Brookfield, IL, leading a geographically distributed consortium of nine partners: Columbus Zoo & Aquarium, OH; Como Zoo & Conservatory, St. Paul, MN; Indianapolis Zoo, IN; Louisville Zoological Garden, KY; Oregon Zoo, Portland, OR; Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, PA; Roger Williams Park Zoo, Providence, RI; Toledo Zoological Gardens, OH, and the organization Polar Bears International. The partnership leadership includes the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. The partnership is joined by experts in conservation psychology and an external advisory board. The primary stakeholders are the diverse 13 million annual visitors to the nine partner zoos. Additional stakeholders include zoo docents, interpreters and educators, as well as the partnership technical team in the fields of learning innovations, technological tools, research review and education practice. The core goals of the planning phase are to a) develop and extend the strong multidisciplinary partnership, b) conduct research needed to understand the preconceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and learning modes of zoo visitors regarding climate change; and c) identify and prototype innovative learning environments and tools. Internal and external evaluations will be conducted by Facet Innovations of Seattle, WA. Activities to achieve these goals include assessments and stakeholder workshops to inventory potential resources at zoos; surveys of zoo visitors to examine demographic, socioeconomic, and technology access parameters of zoo visitors and their existing opinions; and initial development and testing of participatory, experiential activities and technological tools to facilitate learning about the complex system principles underlying the climate system. The long-term vision centers on the development of a network of U.S. zoos, in partnership with climate change domain scientists, learning scientists, conservation psychologists, and other stakeholders, serving as a sustainable infrastructure to investigate strategies designed to foster changes in public attitudes, understandings, and behavior surrounding climate change.
The Museum is partnering with San Francisco State University's Department of Biology to learn more about the zombie fly, Apocephalus borealis, and how this parasitoid (like a parasite, except they always kill their host) affects honey bees, Apis mellifera. You can join this investigation by becoming a ZomBee Hunter! ZomBees are honey bees that have been parasitized by zombie flies. We know that zombie flies have been affecting honey bees in California and South Dakota. The big mysteries that need to be solved are: Where exactly are honey bees being affected? How big of a threat are zombie flies to honey bees? Have zombie flies spread to honey bees across North America? By collecting honey bees in L.A. that look like they have been affected by the zombie fly, you can be a detective for this exciting case.
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Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyJohn Hafernick
The Museum is partnering with Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) to share data and learn more about L.A. butterflies and moths. Help us find and photograph them in Los Angeles. Why Butterflies? Unlike some of the other Citizen Science projects here at the Museum, the L.A. Butterfly Survey (LABS) isn't looking for lost butterflies. We already know the species we are likely to find in L.A., all 236 of them. What we need to find out is which butterflies and moths we're likely to find when we plant the new Pollinator Garden in the Museum's upcoming outdoor exhibit, the North Campus. When you submit images of L.A. butterflies and moths, we'll map the species closest to the Museum and determine which one's might show up when we start planting butterfly attracting plants.
With the Museum's increasing interest in urban biodiversity, we have started looking at all types of wildlife in our highly modified industrial, suburban, and urban habitats. One thing that quickly struck us was that in our own backyard, Exposition Park, nobody had documented any lizards since 1988. This seemed strange, as lizards are common in other parts of Los Angeles, and it led to the question, "Why are there no lizards here?" We hope to answer this question with the LLOLA (pronouced "lola") project. LLOLA aims to do two things: 1) Confirm the presence or absence of lizards in Exposition park. (After all, nobody has looked extensively for them! 2) Find out where lizards DO occur in the Los Angeles Basin, and start to hypothesize why they can survive there.