The planning project, "Is Global Warming Just a Lot of Hot Air?," is a consortium of twenty (20) research institutions, science centers and environmental organizations which will plan exhibits and outreach programs to address climate change and its affect on communities and ecosystems of northern New England. Research scientists will work with informal science educators to develop innovative approaches to presenting what is known about climate change. The planning project will investigate strategies for helping the 1.85 million visitors in the region understand the issues in relation to the landscape and social environment. There is a wide-ranging group of advisors drawn from science, research, classrooms and informal learning centers to guide the 18-month planning project.
The Lawrence Hall of Science will host a follow-up conference to the January, 2004 conference of the National Coalition for Science in After-school. The goal of this 2nd conference is to take the emerging National Coalition for Science in After-school further, bringing in additional organizations and points of view, to take the vision the next step into action plans that will establish an infrastructure, a research agenda and framework, an advocacy campaign and a plan for sustainability that will include further networking among participants. The conference will contribute to the enhancement of science education for the more than ten percent of the Nation's youth who currently participate in after-school programs, many of whom are least well served in the formal educational system. The conference will bring together leaders in science education and after-school programs to combine their best thinking about ways to share current ideas and to create new partnerships, models, research initiatives and organizational structures to advance their work. The conference will allow current and potential leaders in STEM and after-school organizations to inform one another, share best practices and form strategic alliances. In addition to traditional dissemination mechanisms (website, listserv, conference report), the conference will result in an action plan that includes extending membership in the Coalition to additional organizations and its messages to new audiences, including those who work with students with disabilities, community organizations and parent advocates. In addition to Lawrence Hall, the lead organizations in the Coalition are the Exploratorium, TERC, the Children's Aid Society, the National Afterschool Association and The After School Corporation.
The Conference on Cyberlearning Tools for STEM (CyTSE) brings together scientists, cyberlearning developers, educational researchers, STEM educators (formal and informal), curriculum developers and other stakeholders that contribute to the agenda on K-12 STEM cyberlearning and workforce preparation. Collaborators include Northwestern University, University of Colorado at Boulder, and the WGBH Educational Foundation. This informative meeting will be held as a NSTA pre-conference workshop. The conference plan includes keynote presentations by prominent cyberinfrastructure and cyberlearning professionals, an expert panel on cyberlearning and the future of STEM education, hands-on demonstrations of cyberlearning tools for participants, and interactive poster sessions. Potential tracks for the poster sessions include emerging technologies, design and development, technical challenges and solutions, implementation and integration, and research and evaluation. The second day of the conference will include teacher professional development workshops, as well as in-depth design focus groups, developer integration and interoperability workshops, and a session emphasizing the development of a cyberlearning research agenda. Additional deliverables include a video overview of the conference (for those unable to attend), a white paper proposing a cyberlearning research agenda, and an evaluation study to measure the impact of the conference on participants. A series of post-conference webinars will be hosted by WGBH's Teachers' Domain and publicized on their Facebook, Classroom 2.0, and Science Ning sites to encourage ongoing collaboration. It is anticipated that this two-day conference will bridge gaps between the stakeholder communities and expose important trends and issues that will contribute to a comprehensive research agenda.
The proposers will organize and conduct the first of what is hoped will become an Annual Symposium on Children's Science Books that will focus national attention on this important and overlooked channel for science literacy. This first two day symposium will involve 75 editors, authors, librarians and educators in an intensive exploration of science books intended as independent or collateral reading materials for children at home, classroom or library. A national advisory committee will help shape the symposium's content. Professional and popular articles and a book will disseminate the results of the meeting. This project will explore an often-overlooked area of popular science education, and will involve science researchers committed to participating in improving popular education and communication in science. NSF support will be supplemented by university funds and income from the symposium.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alfred BortzIndira Nair
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Learning Center requests $31,767 from NSF in support of a conference focused on research on learning in children's museums, with a special emphasis on science. With funds from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a conference is being held in March at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. Participants are from these fields: Children's museums, cognitive psychology, and education. What will emerge are papers and a video that relate to how we learn in museums, how we can better design exhibits to support learning, and especially learning in science, a survey on permanent science exhibits in children's museums, and a research agenda with researchers matched to sites with preliminary timelines and costs for a number of projects on how we learn, and learn science, in museums. All principals are contributing their time. Rockefeller funds will pay for travel, hotel, and food. NSF funds are requested to support documentation and dissemination which will include a video of the full proceedings for study purposes, a finished 20 - 30 minute video highlighting key ideas. The viseo will be transcribed and edited to produce a series of papers suitable for dissemination.
The WCS/Bronx Zoo, in partnership with the United States Coalition for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (USCDESD), will host a two-day summit targeting professional educators working for institutions that maintain living collections (such as zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens). The goal of the summit is to provide an opportunity for sharing of best practices and development of strategies and recommendations that these institutions can utilize in supporting the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). A key focus will be the fundamental role science has played and will continue to play in finding solutions to the challenges of sustainable development. The summit will involve staff from approximately 50 institutions across the nation and will result in a Recommendations Document and set of Action Plans that will guide the work of the participants, and the field, in the creation of science education programming focusing on sustainable development and the Decade.
Led by Washington University, Making Natural Connections: An Authentic Field Research Collaboration (DRL-0739874), is a series of two field-based informal science education programs in environmental biology targeting St. Louis area teenagers. The project aims for engagement of science research institutions and career scientists in the execution of informal science education programming, bringing real and dynamic context to the science content and allowing for deep and transparent career exploration by teenage participants. Project goals include (1) providing a model for integration of informal science education into the research and restoration projects at biological field stations and nature reserves, (2) communicating current environmental biology research to audiences outside the research community, and (3) influencing the entry of pre-college students into the science career pipeline. The project is a collaborative partnership between Washington University’s Tyson Research Center and the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Shaw Nature Reserve. The Shaw Institute for Field Training (SIFT) program trains St. Louis area high school students in scientific exploration of the natural world at Shaw Nature Reserve. During a one-week training session in June, teens are introduced to a variety of Missouri ecosystems and gain skills necessary to conduct field research, including plant and animal identifications, biotic sampling and census techniques, testing of abiotic factors, and training in the use of maps, compass and GPS. During the rest of the summer and school year, teens are involved in important research and restoration activities at Shaw, Tyson Research Center and other field research sites in the St. Louis area. Fieldwork opportunities may include invasive species management, prairie reconstruction, plant and animal inventories, and prescribed burns. The Tyson Environmental Research Fellowships (TERF) program places high school students as summer interns on ecology and environmental biology research teams at Tyson Research Center. Selected teen participants have successfully completed the SIFT program and apply their field skills to ongoing research projects at Tyson and other partnering research sites. During the summer, the four-week program provides teens with exposure to a variety of field science experiences and skills. TERF teens work alongside university scientists, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduate students. The TERF program provides a cultural apprenticeship in university-based environmental biology research and training in scientific communication. It is an advanced summer experience modeled on the undergraduate research internships offered at Tyson. During the following school year, participants work on posters and presentations for symposia at Washington University and Tyson and at community fairs, and their posters are displayed at Shaw Nature Reserve. A national dissemination workshop for informal science educators, high school biology teachers, and research scientists provides the necessary materials and background to replicate the project design in other locales. The summative evaluation will address impacts on teenage participants (engagement, cognitive and emotional support, competence, career viability, experiential learning) and professional audiences (implementation of teen program, program components, impacts on mentoring scientists). The strategic impact of this project results from the integration of teenage immersion experiences into research activities at a university-based facility. This model of informal science training activities leading into participation in authentic research may be transferable to other STEM disciplines.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Phyllis BalcerzakPeter RavenSusan FlowersKim Medley
This project creates and implements a national parent engagement and education campaign. It provides a framework for all parents to explore existing and alternative forms of assessment within the context of changes in current classroom math curriculum and practices. The campaign also provides a mechanism for enhancing communication between teachers, schools and parents in order to ensure support for math strategies and practices by all members of learning communities nationwide. Project products include: * A thirty-minute documentary on mathematics reform and assessment, to be broadcast by public television stations, that will also include a viewer's guide and local publicity materials. * A Community Education Kit containing a Leader's Guide, Parent's Handbook, and short videotapes. Project materials and activities are designed for parents of elementary-age children, with a specific emphasis for materials on grades 3-5.
Miami University - Ohio/Project Dragonfly is developing "Wild Research," a multi-faceted collaborative project with the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and with a consortium of ten zoos and aquariums around the country, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, the Society for Conservation Biology, and Conservation International. Project deliverables include a centrally-located 4,500 square-foot Wild Research Discovery Forest exhibit and six Wild Research Stations around the Cincinnati Zoo, a Wild Research Consortium and Wild Research Leadership Workshops for zoo professionals, conservation scientists and educators, a Wild Research Web site with visitor password access to exhibit data they collected, and 90-second radio pieces for the 90-Second Naturalist program. Institute for Learning Innovation is conducting the formative and summative evaluations. The Ohio Assessment and Evaluation Center is conducting a separate evaluation focused on this extensive institutional collaboration process. The primary public impact is to explore new ways zoos and aquariums can incorporate inquiry-based activities on site and to help visitors understand the work of conservation scientists. The project also aims to improve the practice of zoo and aquarium professionals nationwide in inquiry-based experiences and communicating about conservation science.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Christopher MyersSamuel Jenike
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The University of Pennsylvania's Out of School Time Resource Center is requesting a planning grant to conduct a symposium that will be used to develop a unique professional development model for informal science educators and out-of-school time providers. Project collaborators include the Philadelphia Zoo, Education Works and Branch Associates. The Symposium will include speakers, workshops and discussion groups designed to introduce the professional development model and obtain feedback and support from area educators. It is anticipated that by engaging representatives from both fields, the project will result in more focused, outcomes-based programs for diverse student audiences.
To focus attention on early education during National Science and Technology Week, ASTC will hold an event on Capitol Hill featuring the Hands-on exhibit "What Makes Music?" on the physics of music and sound. The ASTC Honor Roll Teachers, selected by science Museums across the country for their exemplary use of science museum resources to improve science education in their schools, will be honored. Thirty teachers are expected to attend and take part in a one day workshop on inquiry based, hands-on science activities and experiments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bonnie VanDorn
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The "Successful scaffolding strategies in urban museums: Research and practice on mediated scientific conversations with families and museum educators" project seeks to simultaneously advance existing research on learning in informal settings, and to improve museum educator practice in mediating understanding with families in an urban museum. This collaboration between the Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) in Tampa, Florida, and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) will focus on three research questions: 1. What are several underlying characteristics of successful and unsuccessful strategies for scaffolding understanding of collaborative groups while interacting and talking at life science based exhibits?; 2. How can such identified strategies for scaffolding understanding of collaborative groups be best translated to inform teaching practices in museums, using teacher research as the focus?; 3. Can these scaffolding strategies be disseminated beyond MOSI in a published and replicable model for other informal learning centers? This project is designed to identify, practice and disseminate successful scaffolding strategies, studying, first, how they are used by families visiting MOSI without mediators, and, second, with museum educators. They then will collaborate with museum educator researchers (MERs) to analyze digital audio/video and other data, carefully abstracting new scaffolding tools. This is followed by practice and reflection and broader dissemination with the goal of understanding essential aspects of successful and unsuccessful scaffolding. A "teacher research model" will be used for museum educator professional development. By intertwining demonstrated and effective scaffolding research and practice with populations typically left out of informal education research, the anticipated strategic impact will be in: * Advancing current understanding of a new area of informal learning research centering on scaffolding practices; * Redefining scaffolded teaching practice with museum educator researchers; * Creating a model for conducting collaborative research with families, youth and schools typically not included in museum research and evaluation; * Contributing to overall research on collaborative sense-making conversations in museums; and * Increasing the ability of museum educators who interact with the public, their supervisors and trainers to promote self-directed learning. Once the researched strategies and methodologies for identifying those strategies are documented, future researchers can efficiently add to the body of understandings. This project will have broad implications for all informal learning, no matter the location.