This paper analyzes the effectiveness of real people (actors) as communicators of messages in museums. It includes findings from an evaluation of professional actors, who assume the roles of fictitious and real characters from the history of science, technology, and medicine at the Science Museum in London. The study attempted to understand more fully how visitors react to such live interpretations.
This report presents the findings from a front-end evaluation for Stormy Weather, a major traveling exhibition on severe storms. This exhibition is being developed through a collaboration among the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, National Museum of Natural History, St. Louis Science Center, and National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The purpose of conducting a front-end evaluation is to better understand visitors' perceptions and their baseline knowledge regarding a particular subject--in this case, severe storms. The
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi KornSmithsonian InstitutionSusan Ades
"The Connecticut Museum Collaborative for Science Education" is teacher enhancement program that will serve approximately 5,000 middle school teachers (and their students) from throughout Connecticut over a three-year program period. The proposed program has been developed cooperatively by four of Connecticut's Science Museums and Centers (The Discovery Museum, The Maritime Center at Norwalk, Mystic Marinelife Aquarium, and Talcott Mountain Science Center), in consultation with the school districts they serve and the Connecticut Academy for Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology, the State's leadership organization solely devoted to enhancing education in mathematics, science, and technology. The Collaborative seeks to enliven and enhance the teaching of science, mathematics, and technology by drawing upon the resources of Connecticut's science-rich institutions and related businesses and industry. The proposed project will provide direct services to a core group of 72 middle school teachers and their students in eight urban and suburban school districts at the four participating museums and in their classrooms, as well as teacher training, curriculum development, and networking activities. Larger numbers of teachers and their students will be served through a planned series of interactive video teleconferences. A theme-based approach will be followed in which the unifying theme of "Earth Resource Monitoring" will serve to connect the activities at the four cooperating museums. The central concept of the project is collaboration among museums throughout the state to provide a bridge between science-rich institutions and the schools for teacher enhancement, curriculum improvement, and student enrichment. Special program components involve the participation of business and industry through "Video Field Trips", and parents through a "Family Science" activity. The involvement of the Connecticut Academy for Education in Mathematics, Science and Technolo gy as a member of the "Connecticut Collaborative" provides a direct link for integration of project activities into Connecticut's NSF-funded Statewide Systemic Initiative.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Linda MalkinAlbert Snow
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Informal learning in math, science, and technology is an increasingly important vehicle for educating the public. Throughout their lifetime, the average citizen will spend a much greater amount of time in informal learning environments than in school. For these efforts to continue without benefit of understanding, the dynamics of what makes informal learning experiences work, is a waste of valuable funding resources. Research Communications Ltd. (RCL) proposes an effort to investigate what has been learned about informal learning in math, science, and technology and to develop some directions for future research in this important area. The first step in the process would be to review the existing literature in the three primary areas of informal education for math, science, and technology: television/radio, community projects, and science museums and technology centers with a focus on evaluation studies that have shown what strategies have worked and those that have not. The outcome of this effort would be a comprehensive publication of what is currently known about informal learning research in math, science and technology.
Project Enhanced Science Learning (PESL) offers learning partners opportunities to engage in authentic scientific inquiry through apprenticeship. Such inquiry is often enabled by dynamic interactions among learning partners in physical proximity. Yet scientific and business practice using Internet and broadband services recognizes that not all partners necessary to an interaction can be co-located. Our vision uses new technologies to extend the collaborative "reach" of PESL to include diverse expertise among remote learners, teachers, and scientists. This work, in atmospheric sciences, extends collaborative media beyond asynchronous text-only email to shared workspaces and two-way audio/video connections that allow for collaborative visualization of science phenomena, data, models - What You See Is What I See (WYSIWIS). Tools for local- and wide-area networked learning environments will enable highly interactive, media-rich communications among learning partners. Research on these learning architectures will provide pedagogy and social protocols for authenticating the science learning experience in classrooms and other spaces. Greater motivation to learn and enhanced science learning in terms of more valid, performance assessments should result from students' participations. The next decade brings widespread, networked multi-media interpersonal computing. This project will provide a blueprint to inform the effective use of interpersonal collaborative media for science education.