This proposal calls for development, over five years, of a national, interactive, telecommunications-supported Network of 85 or more affiliated neighborhood technology learning centers in inner cities and other impoverished areas, for the purpose of attracting, and then nurturing underserved peoples' active involvement with math, science, and technology. Network affiliates will provide informal opportunities for disadvantaged minority young people and their families and friends to get access to, and learn to use, the most powerful tool for personal empowerment yet known, to engage in explorations designed to increase awareness of their ability to do math and science and of the potential for careers in these areas, and, through telecommunications, to involve themselves with distant peer groups in collaborative investigations. Such opportunities present attractive and cost-effective alternatives to the dead ends that street life, drugs, incarceration, and/or welfare offer. Success in achieving these goals depends, however, on the availability of continuing programmatic and staff development assistance, and on the ability of Network members to engage, not as disparate entities, but as a mutually supportive community, in this momentous task. Proposed Network services include (in addition to telecommunications linkages) the identification, development, and dissemination of technology-mediated math and science activities appropriate to community education, consultative planning and technical assistance, staff development workshops, the development of a resource database, and an annual all-affiliates meeting -- all these to be accompanied by systematized self-assessment procedures. Also included is the development of a Network infrastructure to support continued existence of the Network beyond the grant period.
Boston's Museum of Science (MOS), with Harvard as its university research partner, is extending, disseminating, and further evaluating their NSF-funded (DRL-0714706) Living Laboratory model of informal cognitive science education. In this model, early-childhood researchers have both conducted research in the MOS Discovery Center for young children and interacted with visitors during the museum's operating hours about what their research is finding about child development and cognition. Several methods of interacting with adult visitors were designed and evaluated, including the use of "research toys" as exhibits and interpretation materials. Summative evaluation of the original work indicated positive outcomes on all targeted audiences - adults with young children, museum educators, and researchers. The project is now broadening the implementation of the model by establishing three additional museum Hub Sites, each with university partners - Maryland Science Center (with Johns Hopkins), Madison Children's Museum (with University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (with Lewis & Clark College). The audiences continue to include researchers (including graduate and undergraduate students); museum educators; and adults with children visiting the museums. Deliverables consist of: (1) establishment of the Living Lab model at the Hub sites and continued improvement of the MOS site, (2) a virtual Hub portal for the four sites and others around the country, (3) tool-kit resources for both museums and scientists, and (4) professional symposia at all sites. Intended outcomes are: (1) improve museum educators' and museum visiting adults' understanding of cognitive/developmental psychology and research and its application to raising their children, (2) improve researchers' ability to communicate with the public and to conduct their research at the museums, and (3) increase interest in, knowledge about, and application of this model throughout the museum community and grow a network of such collaborations.
Five small science museums will form "TEAMS (Traveling Exhibits at Museums of Science) Collaborative". The partners include the Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich, VT; The Catawba Science Center, Hickory, NC; Sciencenter, Ithaca, NY; Discovery Center Museum, Rockford, IL; and the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, Ann Arbor, MI. Each museum partner will develop a 1500 sq. ft. (140 m2) traveling exhibit that will include ten to fifteen interactive units and supporting graphics and will circulate to all members of the partnership. The exhibition topics are: AirPlay (Montshire Museum of Science, Dirt (Catawba Science Center), You Can Count On It (Sciencenter), Amusement Park Science (Discovery Center Museum), and Eureka Labs: Science from Head to Toe (Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum). Following the circulation among the consortium members, it is anticipated that the exhibits will circulate more broadly via the Association of Science-Technology Centers Traveling Exhibit's Program. In addition to developing these exhibits, the collaboration has an additional goals 1) focusing on the family audiences by working together to enhance the family science learning through the development of resources that can be used by families that are related to exhibition topics, 2) building institutional expertise in exhibit design, family programming, and evaluation; and 3) conducting research on family learning and sharing results with the field. Complementary materials and activities for teachers will also be developed for each exhibit.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David GoudyCharles TrautmannSarah WolfMike SinclairJames FrenzaCynthia Yao
Community Ambassadors in Science Exploration (CASE) is a new model for encouraging the appreciation and understanding of science among underserved families through: a corps of teen and adult peer presenters; a curriculum of hands-on learning experiences for families of diverse ages and backgrounds; a regional network of museum-community collaboration; integration of community and museum resources through joint programming; and a longitudinal research study of program impacts. CASE will serve over 20,000 people over three years with peer-presented family learning opportunities and museum experiences. In addition, CASE will train a total of 108 science ambassadors who will offer science workshops at community-based organizations in the languages spoken by their constituencies. Through CASE, the ambassadors will gain training and experience in informal science education that can open the door to possible future career opportunities in community and museum settings. Building on a ten-year history of museum-community collaboration, CASE will be conducted by PISEC, the Philadelphia/Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative. PISEC includes four major Philadelphia informal science institutions: The Franklin Institute, the Philadelphia Zoo, The Academy of Natural Sciences and The New Jersey State Aquarium. This organization conducts research and outreach projects in support of family science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Minda BorunKathleen WagnerAngela WengnerNaomi Echental
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
"Saving Species" will engage large and diverse public audiences in inquiry-based learning and environmental stewardship through a system of exhibits at zoos and other informal science education institutions throughout the U.S. The exhibit system will include more than 70 touch screen interactives and related technological infrastructure being created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University (Ohio). Project partners include the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Brookfield Zoo, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Columbus Zoo & Aquarium, Denver Zoo, Liberty Science Center, Louisville Zoological Garden, New York State Zoo, Oregon Zoo, Pittsburgh Zoo, Riverbanks Zoo, Santa Barbara Zoo, Shedd Aquarium, Toledo Zoo, The Wilds, Woodland Park Zoo, and Zoo Atlanta. Touch screen exhibit components will be designed for specific programs at partner zoos. The partner institutions in this consortium are establishing exhibits nationwide linked to one of three Saving Species campaigns: 1) the Great Ape Campaign allows families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field researchers; 2) the Wild Cat Campaign focuses on endangered cat species and allows families to join in conservation efforts along with professionals; 3) the Sustaining Life Campaign builds on widespread interest and growing exhibitry in environmental stewardship, renewable energy, and climate change. The consortium includes a shared library of public inquiry and public-action tools (e.g., cell phone recycling), as well as remote monitoring capabilities that provide real-time measures of station success, facilitating the development of variations of exhibit interactives across the country. More than 500 staff from informal science institutions are participating in "Saving Species" professional development through workshops and graduate courses in major cities and conservation sites worldwide. The formal educational opportunities include two new Master\'s degree programs co-delivered by Miami University and informal science institutions: (1) the Advanced Inquiry Program, and (2) the Global Field Program. Strategic partners include the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, public television, Conservation International, and the Society of Conservation Biology. Project evaluation by the Institute for Learning Innovation includes specific assessment protocols that are identifying patterns of engagement by gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic class so that disparities can be addressed across these demographics. A planning study and front-end evaluation will inform the future development of personalized, post-visit engagement opportunities on social networking platforms. "Saving Species" will achieve broad impact nationally, reaching millions of visitors to the participating institutions annually during the funding period and beyond, fostering the relationship between science inquiry and public action, and building multi-institutional partnerships committed to sustaining life on our planet.
The National Science Outreach Network will provide school children, teachers, and the general public with highly accessible interactive exhibits dealing with popular topics in science and technology. The network, initiated as a partnership between regional science centers and public libraries, will be modeled after the highly successful statewide Oregon Library Exhibits Network established in 1987. Through this smaller network, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, a nationally recognized pioneer in science exhibitry and outreach programming, circulates small hands-on exhibits to rural population centers through installations in public libraries, where school groups and families have free and convenient access. This national dissemination project will be initiated in five regional sites across the country (Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, and Oregon) to further establish the model in rural, inner-urban, economically disadvantaged, and culturally diverse regions. With support from both the NSF and the regional networks, The National Science Outreach Network will design and duplicate six exhibits for circulation to dozens of local communities in each designated region. Over the next seven years, over six million individuals, many of whom do not currently frequent a local science center, will be introduced to popular science in a non-threatening, resource- rich setting. This will encourage further exploration and possible future visits to an accessible science center, and ultimately establish an ever-expanding network of museum and non-museum partners providing science and technology learning opportunities to millions of individuals each year.
The MIT Media Laboratory, in collaboration with six museums, will develop the "Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network," with the goal of engaging a broader audience in science inquiry and engineering by enabling more people to create, invent and explore with new digital technologies. PIE museums will integrate the latest MIT technologies and educational research into their ongoing public programs. The museums will organize MindFest events, modeled after a two-day event at MIT in 1999, at which youth, educators, artists, engineers, hobbyists and researchers came together to collaborate on invention projects. The PIE Network will disseminate PIE ideas and activities to educators and families nationally.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickNatalie RuskBakhtiar MikhakMike PetrichKaren Wilkinson
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.
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.
The four New England museums of the Environmental Exhibit Lab (EEC) set out in the Fall of 2011 to create a replicable model of collaborative professional development for small museums. At small institutions, impending deadlines, budget and staffing limitations, and professional isolation all too often get in the way of true innovation. The goal of Exhibit Lab was to help staff who, though conversant with current museum theory, sometimes struggle to apply that theory to their daily work, or to disseminate these ideas through an institution. Exhibit Lab relied on a carefully crafted mix of meetings, workshops and staff exchanges, a combination of outside experts and peer-to-peer mentoring, to foster a community of practitioners, engaged in collaborative learning-by-doing. In short, the participants created a "virtual department" in which we came to rely as quickly on our peers in a partner museum as quickly as we would to a co-worker down the hall had we worked in a larger museum. The Exhibit Lab project focused on the work of the Exhibit and Program/Education staffs, but we feel that the project model holds lessons for other museum departments, and for museums outside the Children's and Science museum sphere.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Worcester Natural History Society dba EcoTariumBetsy LoringAlexander GoldowskySuzanne OlsonChris SullivanPhelan FretzJulie SilvermanNeil GordonDenise LeBlancJoseph P. Cox