The Biodiversity Project is requesting funds to plan a national conference on the topic of global biodiversity. The goal of the conference is to build an education agenda for biodiversity that will identify successful programs, provide strategies for reaching underserved and underrepresented groups, foster collaboration and coordinate financial support for biodiversity across agencies. The planning process will yield a conference agenda, a list of invitees, a list of potential speakers, goals, themes and activities, as well as identification of model projects. A budget and fundraising plan will also be developed.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Annette BerkovitsTom Naiman
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This conference proposal, organized by the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, is convening professionals both in higher education and in informal science education, all of whom have done work or are seriously interested in the interface of science, society and civic engagement. The purpose of the conference is to build bridges between and explore new connections among these communities around their mutual interests in emerging educational practices that promote self-directed learning in STEM through connections with matters of civic consequence.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William Burns
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The following is one of three focus point presentations delivered as part of the session titled “Citizen Science Project Design” on day two of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007. Wilderman discusses different models for community science and the pros/cons of each model.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Candie C. Wilderman
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The following is one of three focus point presentations delivered as part of the session titled “Citizen Science Project Design” on day two of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007. Sandra Henderson, UCAR Citizen Science Programs Manager, discusses two citizen science campaigns, GLOBE at Night and Project BudBurst. Henderson reviews some concerns about data quality and lessons learned on data verification. Henderson also introduces a new project called Great World Side Star Count.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sandra Henderson
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This recap poses provocations or questions in response to four presentations delivered as part of the session titled “Citizen Science Project Design” on day two of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007. Martin Storksdieck, Director of Project Development at the Institute for Learning Innovation, summarizes the key elements of citizen science projects and poses questions for the field.
The Department of Education of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, with broad participatory support from free-standing, university-based and regional natural history museums across the nation will conduct a 3-day national conference on informal science learning in natural history settings. The goal of this conference will be to develop and disseminate a sustained, collaborative learning research agenda that begins to address the role of natural history museums in natural history learning and establish an infrastructure for communication and collaboration to pursue the research agenda. The conference builds on recent meetings among museums and informal learning professionals to this topic. Executive and Leadership Committees will implement a scaffolded project design involving a sweep of evaluation reports and audience research from the field, a foundational literature review, Committee workshops to review the field, conference planning and call for participation, and pre-conference dialogue through professional organizations and activities. The conference, to be held in Washington, DC in Spring-Summer 2012, will be followed by broad post-conference dissemination of findings and a call to action around the conference-generated research agenda. The conference will be evaluated by Oberg Research, an external audience research and evaluation firm. Oberg will develop an evaluation process that measures the quality, relevance, and impact of pre-conference, conference, and post-conference activities using an ethnographic fieldwork methodology involving in-depth interviews and participant observation of conference activities. The intended outcomes and impacts of this national conference are to develop, initiate, and disseminate a collaborative and sustained learning research agenda about how the 800 natural history museums in the United States can best use their resources for STEM learning. Among the topics to be considered by the Conference are new models for interaction among educators, curators, collection managers, exhibit professionals and museum leadership; audience research to more fully understand audiences and their needs; new technologies for discovery and learning regarding rapid response and current science; public participation in scientific research (citizen science); and collaboration in learning research across the Natural History field.
This research agenda is a living document, constructed in response to on-going field-wide conversations following the 21st Century Natural History Settings Conference at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. At the conference, natural history professionals explored new directions for museums and other natural history institutions, including zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens, and nature centers. The research agenda is intended to be edited, discussed, and fleshed out by the field as we work together and make progress. New research questions will emerge spurred by surprising findings