Liberty Science Center (LSC) received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to develop, install and evaluate a 12,800-square foot, two-story permanent exhibition about skyscrapers. Skyscraper! is meant to showcase the architectural design and engineering, physics, and urban-related environmental science of skyscrapers. The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), a Maryland-based research and evaluation organization that focuses on lifelong learning in informal or free-choice settings, was contracted to conduct the summative exhibition evaluation. The purpose of the summative evaluation
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Kerry BronnenkantLiberty Science CenterClaudia Figueiredo
LOOP is the working title for a multiplatform project to promote environmental and scientific literacy about sustainability for children ages 6-9 and their families. Unlike most educational materials for this age group, the LOOP approach requires the audience to learn about the interconnectedness of environmental and human systems in a cross-disciplinary manner. Produced by WGBH, the center piece of the project will be a television series designed for PBS with accompanying digital media on the web and an extensive "Get to Know Your World" outreach initiative. The U.S. Forest Service is one of the project's partners. At this development stage, the project will: -Conduct front-end research to obtain a baseline understanding about what kids know about environmental sustainability. -Further develop and test LOOP's proposed creative style. -Produce an animatic (a simple mock-up) of a full episode and accompanying live-action video, with input from Content Directors. -Perform formative evaluation to assess the learning impact of the animatic and live-action video to inform series production. Concord Evaluation Group will conduct the front-end research to assess children\'s knowledge of environmental sustainability and formative evaluation of the animatic pilot. Global Mechanic is the animation producer. The project has the potential to (1) inform the field on how to enhance young children\'s understanding of complex ecological concepts; and (2) "push the envelope" by exploring how mass media can support local environmental investigation and promote outdoor family explorations. Introducing children to systems thinking, especially around environmental subjects, could make a significant contribution to their understanding of and approach to STEM.
This Pathways Project connects rural, underserved youth and families in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho to STEM concepts important in sustainable building design. The project is a collaboration of the Palouse Discovery Science Center (Pullman, WA), Washington State University and University of Idaho, working in partnership with rural community organizations and businesses. The deliverables include: 1) interactive exhibit prototype activities, 2) a team cooperative learning problem-solving challenge, and (3) take-home materials to encourage participants to use what they have learned to investigate ways to make their homes more energy-efficient and sustainable. The project introduces youth and families to the traditionally difficult physics concept of thermal energy, particularly as it relates to sustainable building design. Participants explore how building materials and their properties can be used to control all three types of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. The interactive exhibit prototypes are coupled with an Energy Efficient Engineering Challenge in which participants, working in cooperative learning teams, use information learned from the exhibit prototype activities to retrofit a model house, improving its energy efficiency. The project components are piloted at the Palouse Discovery Science Center, and then travel to three underserved rural/tribal communities in Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Front-end and formative evaluation studies will demonstrate whether this model advances participant understanding of and interest in STEM topics and careers. The project will yield information about ways that other ISE practitioners can effectively incorporate cooperative learning strategies in informal settings to improve the transferability of knowledge gained from exhibits to real-world problem-solving challenges, especially for rural and underserved audiences. This project will also provide the ISE field with: 1) a model for increasing the capacity of small, rural science centers to form collaborative regional networks that draw on previously unused resources in their communities and provide more effective outreach to the underrepresented populations they serve, and 2) a model for coupling cooperative learning with outreach exhibits, providing richer experiences of active engagement.
Through Wildlife Watch, participants gain first hand experience with plants and animals in their natural environment. The Wildlife Watch website features downloadable "watch" lists by state, and the capability for visitors to share wildlife sightings, photos and stories online. Wildlife Watch is an introductory citizen science program that is perfect for families, photographers, kids, outdoor enthusiasts and anyone who wants a deeper connection with world around them.
Gardeners visit this site and report what varieties perform well - and not so well - in their gardens. Other gardeners visit to view the variety ratings and read the reviews to decide which might work well for them. The VVfG citizen science project also provides an opportunity for researchers to involve knowledgeable, motivated citizens in meaningful scientific research. Research on the performance of vegetable varieties is often limited to commercial production in part, because visiting thousands of home gardens to collect data would be an overwhelming task.
Project BudBurst engages people from across the United States in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. Project BudBurst participants take careful observations of the phenological events such as the first leafing, first flower, and first fruit ripening for a variety of plant species including trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, weeds and ornamentals. Project BudBurst is particularly interested in observations of native plant species. The citizen science observations are reported online to a national database. As a result valuable environmental and climate change information is being collected in a consistent way across the country. Scientists can use this data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data.
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University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Office of Outreach and EducationChicago Botanic GardenUniversity of MontanaSandra Henderson
The Annual Midwest Crane Count started in 1976 and currently covers 5 states. The primary purposes of the Crane Count are to help ICF monitor the abundance and distribution of cranes in the Upper-Midwest which helps with crane research as well as introducing people to cranes and their natural environment. In the 1930's, an estimated 25 pairs of Sandhill Cranes resided in Wisconsin. The year 2000 Count tallied more than 13,000 Sandhill Cranes.
You can Celebrate Urban Birds by gardening, by organizing a community event, or by connecting to the outdoors through art projects. Become a citizen-scientist by observing birds in your neighborhood and sending the data to scientists at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. For anyone, anywhere, anytime (even in the suburbs or the country!)... everybody can Celebrate Urban Birds in some way.
The North American Bird Phenology Program houses a unique and largely forgotten collection of six million Migration Observer Cards that illuminate migration patterns and population status of birds in North America. These handwritten cards contain almost all of what was known of bird status from the Second World War back to the later part of the 19th century. The bulk of the records are the result of a network of observers who recorded migration arrival dates in the spring and fall that, in its heyday, involved 3000 participants. Today, those records are being processed and placed online where volunteers, worldwide, can go onto the BPP website and transcribe these images into our database for analysis. This information will be used, along with recently collected arrival times of migrant birds, in conjunction with historical weather data to show how migration is affected by climate change.
You are invited to join Project Squirrel, a Citizen Science program for all ages. Participation only takes a few minutes--simply log on to ProjectSquirrel.org to tell us about the squirrels in your neighborhood. Join people all across Chicagoland as we learn more about the ecology of our neighborhoods through the eyes of squirrels. For more information go to www.projectsquirrel.org.
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Peggy Notebaert Nature MuseumUniversity of Illinois at ChicagoWendy Jackson
The Minnesota Loon Monitoring Program (MLMP) is a long-term project of the Minnesota DNR. Hundreds of volunteer observers annually gather information about common loon numbers on more than 600 lakes in six regions of the state. Volunteers visit each lake for one morning in early July, count the number of adult & juvenile loons seen, and report these observations to the DNR for analysis. The MLMP provides the DNR with the ability to detect changes in the population and reproductive success of the state's common loons, and to anticipate any problems that could jeopardize the future of Minnesota's state bird.
Volunteer "Species Stewards" adopt one or more species of native prairie or savanna plants. On semi-monthly or more frequent visits, stewards log locations, bloom dates, and seed ripening dates, and collect seed to be used to restore additional prairie on old field sites. Additional opportunities for individual or group seed collection and sowing are provided. Buckthorn-busting is also available.