How People Make Things is an exhibition that helps families talk together and learn about the making of everyday objects. The goal of the project was to create a learning environment that mediates difficult manufacturing concepts for parents, and scaffolds the development of family conversations about the processes of making both inside and outside the museum. A visit to the exhibition would be deemed successful if visitors demonstrated changes in what they knew and how they talked about objects and manufacturing processes. A model of change describing how families might build such an
Partnering with National Musical Arts, the Science Museum of Minnesota seeks to develop BioMusic, a 4,000 sq. ft. traveling exhibition that explores the origins of music in nature and the connections between music and sound of living things. This project is based on planning grant ESI-0211611 (The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music) awarded to NMA. The project is based on the emerging interdisciplinary research field of biomusic, which includes musicology plus aspects of neuroscience, biology, zoology, environmental science, physics, psychology, math and anthropology. The exhibit sections -- "Humanimal" Music; Natural Symphonies; Ancient Roots; Music, Body and Mind; and World of Music -- use both music and natural sound to explore biodiversity, cultural diversity, the physics of sound and the brain. BROADER IMPACT: The exhibition is expected to travel for at least six years, reaching some two million people in 18 communities. It is to be accompanied by a six-part radio series (Sweet Bird Classics) for young children. Because of the connection to music and many other areas of public interest, this exhibition has the potential to attract and engage new audiences to science museums and stimulate their interest in STEM.
WGBHs third season of the PBS Design Squad reality series, designed to inspire a new generation of engineers, got teenagers to think smart, build fast, and contend with a wild array of engineering challenges for real-life clients. Targeted to 9- to 12-year-olds, and fun for people of all ages, this fast-paced TV series is the fuel behind a national, multimedia initiative to attract kids to engineering. The project expaned its reach into the middle school classroom to create the first online community where kids can share their real-world engineering projects and provide a richer video viewing experience with embedded "pop-up" commentary.
FETCH with Ruff Ruffman is a daily half-hour PBS television series with accompanying Web and outreach activities targeted to 6- to 10-year olds. The program brings science learning to young children by uniquely blending live-action with animation, game show convention with reality programming, and humor with academics. The intended impacts are to 1) help the target audience develop interest, knowledge and skills necessary to do science; 2) train afterschool leaders to better facilitate science activities with kids; and 3) demonstrate how media can be used to teach substantive science and share the results of project evaluation with others in the field. The requested funds will allow the project to expand the science curriculum with 20 new half-hour episodes and expand the Web site, focusing on three new science themes that highlight topics of interest to this age group. The Web site will include four new science-based Web games that will allow kids to create and post content of their own design and contribute to nationwide data collection. A new FETCH Online Training resource will be created to help afterschool leaders to effectively engage in FETCH's hands-on science activities. American Institutes for Research (AIR) will conduct summative evaluation of the Online Training program.
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 from Boston College will test the efficacy of an intergenerational interdisciplinary hydroponics program involving curriculum development and activities at the Salvation Army's Kroc Center and the STEM Garden Institute for 4-6th grade youths and seniors. The primary research includes an examination of the efficacy of intergenerational interdisciplinary community based research. Additional goals of the hydroponic program include the examination of the ways in which urban community-based hydroponic programs foster motivation and self-efficacy, and how well youths and seniors understand the scientific inquiry process involving technology, economics and plant production. The research design includes qualitative and quantitative methods. The project will evaluate the ways in which the instructors implement the program with youth and seniors. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of the technologies associated with plant production and knowledge acquisition in the area of hydroponics from the development through the delivery of the plant products to sell at the local Farmer's Market. Interviews, focus groups and survey will be administered to seniors and youth throughout the project. The project will disseminate a science inquiry based instructional guide for informal providers and youth who are involved with informal science education programs. The guide will focus on hydroponics with an emphasis on the electromagnetic spectrum, photosynthesis, pH, and nutrients, and electrical conductivity science concepts. More than 120-150 youth and 200 seniors will participate in the hydroponics program. Additional materials on the development of economic and business planning will be developed for the use of planning and setting up a Farmer's Market retail business. The materials will be available through the Salvation Army's Kroc Center. The Kroc Center averages 500-1000 visitors per day in addition to the Center's website, which averages 1200 unique visits per day.
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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TEAM MEMBERS:
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Office of Outreach and EducationChicago Botanic GardenUniversity of MontanaSandra Henderson
BirdSleuth is an inquiry-based science curriculum that engages kids in scientific study and real data collection through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's citizen science projects. Each BirdSleuth module encourages students do what “real” scientists do: ask questions, collect data, look for patterns and evidence, test ideas, draw conclusions, and share results. Each module scaffolds one or more citizen science projects, and includes lesson plans, student journals, a reference guide, and a resource kit containing such tools as Focus Cards, CD-ROMs or DVDs, books, and full-color posters.
The Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey is a collaboration of scientists, students, conservationists, resource managers and 'amateur' scientists. Our goal is to collect high-quality data on the abundance and distribution of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) in its native (Europe) and introduced (North America) ranges. This sampling protocol is designed to be simple and achieved with just a few hours of work, once populations have been located. It well help to fill an large gap in data on native and introduced plant populations.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Global Invasions NetworkRobert Colautti
Monarchs in the Classroom provides a wide variety of materials and professional development opportunities for teachers, naturalists and citizens throughout the US. Two groups of behind the scenes people work together in a unique partnership to make this program successful: classroom teachers and scientists committed to sharing their expertise with the broader community. All of our programs reflect this partnership, combining real science with techniques that work for teachers, students and citizens, and promoting practices in which children learn science in ways that reflect the inquiry methods used by scientists to understand the natural world.
CitSci.org is a website supporting citizens who monitor invasive species. CitSci.org provides a mapping program that allows citizens, school groups, and professionals to enter invasive species observations into a global database. The observations are then used for natural resource management, scientific studies, and environmental education. CitSci.org offers an opportunity for students and volunteers to perform field studies that contribute to our collective biological databases.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
National Institute of Invasive Species ScienceJames Graham