The Museum is partnering with San Francisco State University's Department of Biology to learn more about the zombie fly, Apocephalus borealis, and how this parasitoid (like a parasite, except they always kill their host) affects honey bees, Apis mellifera. You can join this investigation by becoming a ZomBee Hunter! ZomBees are honey bees that have been parasitized by zombie flies. We know that zombie flies have been affecting honey bees in California and South Dakota. The big mysteries that need to be solved are: Where exactly are honey bees being affected? How big of a threat are zombie flies to honey bees? Have zombie flies spread to honey bees across North America? By collecting honey bees in L.A. that look like they have been affected by the zombie fly, you can be a detective for this exciting case.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyJohn Hafernick
The Museum is partnering with Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) to share data and learn more about L.A. butterflies and moths. Help us find and photograph them in Los Angeles. Why Butterflies? Unlike some of the other Citizen Science projects here at the Museum, the L.A. Butterfly Survey (LABS) isn't looking for lost butterflies. We already know the species we are likely to find in L.A., all 236 of them. What we need to find out is which butterflies and moths we're likely to find when we plant the new Pollinator Garden in the Museum's upcoming outdoor exhibit, the North Campus. When you submit images of L.A. butterflies and moths, we'll map the species closest to the Museum and determine which one's might show up when we start planting butterfly attracting plants.
With the Museum's increasing interest in urban biodiversity, we have started looking at all types of wildlife in our highly modified industrial, suburban, and urban habitats. One thing that quickly struck us was that in our own backyard, Exposition Park, nobody had documented any lizards since 1988. This seemed strange, as lizards are common in other parts of Los Angeles, and it led to the question, "Why are there no lizards here?" We hope to answer this question with the LLOLA (pronouced "lola") project. LLOLA aims to do two things: 1) Confirm the presence or absence of lizards in Exposition park. (After all, nobody has looked extensively for them! 2) Find out where lizards DO occur in the Los Angeles Basin, and start to hypothesize why they can survive there.
The Climate Change Toolkit includes a suite of resources that address the science behind climate change while encouraging participants to take action to reduce the effects of climate change. Each resource has been designed to be low cost and easy for educators to reproduce. Contents of the Toolkit include: (1) Ten Hands-on Cart Activities - These hands-on, cart-type science activities for families in an informal education setting or for children in an afterschool setting, engage participants with the science of climate change. The activities are divided into two categories, those that address the science behind climate change, and those that address how individual choices affect the rate of climate change. (2) Four Portable Self-Guided Exhibits Kits - These self-guided science kits use four hands-on activities per kit to explore how climate change is affecting the forest, ocean, urban, and atmosphere environments. Each kit can be packaged in a small bag or box and bundled together with an activity map box for check-out by families in an informal education setting. (3) Public Presentation - CO2 and You is a twenty-minute presentation that provides the option of using interactive clickers to introduce the science behind how fossil fuel consumption leads to climate change. The interactive presentation also explores how simple energy choices can have a positive effect on the climate. (4) Museum Field Trip Program - The Power the Future field trip uses an interactive diagram to explain how carbon based fossil fuels such as coal emit carbon dioxide and contribute to climate change. The program then discusses the need to transition away from carbon based energy sources such as fossil fuels to those that do not emit carbon dioxide, such as wind power. The second section of the program guides visitors through a hands-on inquiry activity where they explore their own windmills.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlie TrautmannKatie LevedahlAlberto López
Passport to Health is a new program from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, supported by the Colorado Health Foundation. It engages students, their families, and their teachers in discovering how incredibly unique their bodies are. Passport to Health expands upon the Museum’s newest permanent exhibition, Expedition Health. This interactive health exhibit has an expedition theme of climbing a mountain, which creates an environment for visitors to learn the science behind their amazing bodies. Passport to Health is a comprehensive hands-on program that deepens and extends the exhibit experience for 5th graders at about 30 participating Passport to Health schools, which are all low-income schools in the Denver metro area. Expedition Health and Passport to Health share the idea that health depends on genetics, lifestyle, and environment. The objective of Passport to Health is to increase students’ understanding of health science, raise their health literacy, and inspire them toward healthy lifestyles.
Climate change science is becoming a more frequent and integral part of the middle school curriculum. This project, NASA Data in My Field Trip, proposes to leverage a regional network of Informal Science Institutions (ISIs) committed to climate change education, the Global Climate Change Consortium (GC3). This project will support climate change education in the formal curriculum by creating opportunities for inquiry-based exploration of NASA data and products in class and as part of already established field trip experiences to ISIs. The ISIs of the recently formed GC3 include a broad range of science-based institutions including Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), Carnegie Science Center (CSC), Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, National Aviary, and the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Partners, Pittsburgh Public Schools and Wilkinsburg School District have respectively 70 and 99% minority populations. NASA Data in My Field Trip will build innovative connections among NASA data and products, ISI resources and experiences, curriculum standards, and educators in formal and informal environments. It has three components: (1) joint professional development for formal and informal educators, (2) in-class pre-field trip data explorations, and (3) the integration of NASA resources into ISI field trip experiences. In the first phase of NASA Data in My Field Trip, CMNH and CSC will pilot NASA resources as central components of middle school climate change field trips as well as in pre-visit experiences. In the second phase, three other GC3 ISIs will tailor the pilot products to their climate change field trips. In both phases, formal and informal educators will participate in joint professional development. Alignment with the school districts' curriculum and formative evaluation is critical at all steps of this project and will guide and inform the implementation of the project through both phases. The success of the project will be measured in terms of (1) educators’ attitudes toward and ability to use NASA resources, (2) the effectiveness of in-class and field trip experiences for students, (3) the development of a community of practice among informal and formal educators, and (4) the adoption of NASA data and products into informal and formal programming outside of the project’s specified reach. Primary strengths of this project are that it brings NASA resources to underserved schools and includes ISIs that have a commitment to climate change education but have not previously connected with NASA or its resources. Techniques developed in this project will be tailored to a diversity of ISIs and can therefore serve as a replicable model for NASA products throughout the ISI field.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Kerry HandronEllen McCallieJohn RadzilowiczPittsburgh Public SchoolsWilkinsburg School DistrictPittsburgh Zoo and PPG AquariumNational AviaryPhipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
Several years ago, Kansas City leaders decided to boost future economic growth by developing science and engineering skills in the area’s work force. There was a problem though: Kansas City’s workers and students weren’t very interested in science and engineering. So, five organizations, including a library and museum, founded KC Science, INC to improve science literacy in the bi-state Kansas City metropolitan region. Partners included the Johnson County (KS) Library as the lead partner; Science City, the region’s premier science museum; KCPT, the local public television station; Science Pioneers, a group that produces educational materials and activities for teachers and students; and Pathfinder Science, an online collaborative community of teachers and students engaging in scientific research. The group received a 2006 Partnership for a Nation of Learners* grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) because the community partnership’s focus on science-related careers and lifelong learning helped build a foundation for an informed citizenry.
SciGirls is a national dissemination project, which puts resources from the PBS science series DragonflyTV into the hands of outreach professionals at PBS stations and educators in after school programs for girls. The current project leverages PBS' nationwide network of member stations to connect the educational research community with practitioners in the field. Thus far SciGirls has trained over 100 educators and community leaders and reached 2,300 girls in grades 3 through 8. SCIGIRLS MUSEUM ADVENTURES has four objectives: 1) to provide museum educators with DragonflyTV videos that model authentic inquiry in museum settings; 2) to expand SciGirls activity guides with new museum-based activities and research-based strategies specifically for museum educators; 3) to create a set of online, streaming videos that demonstrate best practices in gender-inclusive teaching; and 4) to facilitate feedback between our participants and the research community and deepen our understanding of the most effective ways to engage girls in STEM activities. Intellectual Merit--The strength of SciGirls lies in its comprehensive multimedia approach and its foundation in the inquiry-based strategies defined in the National Science Education Standards. The videos provided in SciGirls emphasize the process of science, rather than a collection of science facts. They provide real-world models of inquiry that all girls can do. Taken together, the SciGirls resources stimulate discussion, build confidence and pave the way for girls to investigate science questions on their own. The educational strategies provided by SciGirls are based in research into gender- inclusive STEM teaching and learning, translated into strategies that can be easily used by after school educators to create successful STEM experiences for girls. Broader Impact--SCIGIRLS MUSEUM ADVENTURES will provide museum educators at ten sites with materials that can be used in their programs for years to come. The entire set of resources--streaming videos and Activity Guides--will be available on DragonflyTV's Web site at www.pbs.org. The outcomes of the project will be shared with the informal science education research community. Findings will be reported at the annual PBS National Center for Outreach Conference
Science beyond the schoolhouse is the subject of this close-up look at informal science--education in non-traditional settings, including Boys and Girls Clubs, 4-H, zoos, aquariums, and public television. More than a dozen writers draw on personal experiences to tell why they became informal science educators and how they use the history and theory of traditional science education in their work. Among the features of this book for informal science educators are a resource directory and a special section on program evaluation. Articles include: (1) "The Symbiosis of Formal and Informal
Current accounts of the development of scientific reasoning focus on individual children's ability to coordinate the collection and evaluation of evidence with the creation of theories to explain the evidence. This observational study of parent–child interactions in a children's museum demonstrated that parents shape and support children's scientific thinking in everyday, nonobligatory activity. When children engaged an exhibit with parents, their exploration of evidence was observed to be longer, broader, and more focused on relevant comparisons than children who engaged the exhibit without
In this article, we use two studies conducted in art museum settings as a means to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges for the field of informal art education. The first study explores artmaking processes that take place in a children’s museum, highlighting the need to consider the social nature of learning in informal environments. Second, a study with families in an art museum explores art appreciation and interpretation. Taken together—the creating and the responding—these two studies are used to point out how we might trace disciplinary processes in art beyond schools into the
Museums invest considerable resources in promoting and supporting elementary-school field trips, but remain skeptical about their educational value. Recent cognitive psychology and neuroscience research require a reappraisal of how and what to assess relative to school-field-trip learning. One hundred and twenty-eight subjects were interviewed about their recollections of school field trips taken during the early years of their school education: 34 fourth-grade students, 48 eighth-grade students, and 46 adults composed the group. Overall, 96% of all subjects could recall a school field trip