In October 2005, the National Science Foundation brought members of its nanoscale science and engineering education (NSEE) projects to Arlington, VA for a 2-day workshop to explore the status of on-going efforts and to forge collaborations at the national level that would facilitate future efforts. NSF currently funds NSEE projects through the Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education (ESIE), the Directorate for Engineering as part of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers (NSEC), National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), the Network for Computational
This monograph, the final report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit held in April 2005, presents an action plan for this emerging field applicable to higher education, K-12 education, policy makers, media & the arts, and research, and details the strategic priorities and specific recommendations for these sectors that were the summit's major outcomes.
Based on the premise that one component of NASA's pre-college education program is intended to support and enact school reform, the Committee for the Evaluation and Review of NASA's Pre-College Education Program requested an analysis of how the NASA Explorer School (NES) Model aligns with other national models of school-wide improvement and reform. The purpose and focus of this paper is to summarize key elements of major school improvement and reform models as well as specific content reform models from the literature, and to analyze the extent to which there is alignment between these models
This paper presents a summary of each of 10 evaluations conducted of NASA educational programs. The paper begins with a table outlining the titles of the evaluations and who conducted them, the date of the report, the evaluation questions, the evaluation design or methods and brief comments on the quality of each report. After the table each report is considered in more depth through an overview of what the evaluation included as well as a critique of the evaluation questions, methods and findings. The paper concludes with an overall commentary on the set of evaluations.
In 2006, the National Research Council initiated a study on Learning Science in Informal Environments. The purpose of the study is to synthesize a range of relevant literatures and recommend strategic directions for future research in the area. In the course of working on this study the Committee has found one of its challenges to be the identification and assessment of evaluation studies of informal science programs, in particular those which have probed science learning outcomes. To that end they commissioned the Institute for Learning Innovation to produce a paper that would help them
This paper lays out a theory of (re-)generative learning to explain how families and communities socialize young learners into thinking like scientists and mathematicians. Cultural communities and their families orient their young in varied ways toward the language, behaviors, and self-theories about the future presupposed in the learning of science and mathematics. Certain socialization processes and norms correspond closely with those that scientists and artists use in laboratories, studios, and rehearsals. Certain norms of politeness and patterns of language differ significantly from habits
Research in the out-of-school time (OST) field confirms that there is a strong connection between professional development (PD) for staff and positive outcomes for youth. According to Heather Weiss, Founder and Director of the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), professional development for those who work with children and youth is fraught with challenges and ripe with opportunity and specifically, the opportunity to increase staff quality, which experts agree is critical to positive experiences for children and youth (Weiss, 2005/2006). However, as Thomas Guskey (1998) states, "For many
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of PennsylvaniaNancy Peter
To explore how the United States can harness the powerful features of digital games for learning, the Federation of American Scientists, the Entertainment Software Association, and the National Science Foundation convened a National Summit on Educational Games, on October 25, 2005 in Washington, DC. The Summit brought together nearly 100 experts to discuss ways to accelerate the development, commercialization, and deployment of new generation games for learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Federation of American ScientistsHenry Kelly
New mobile device features and the growing proportion of visitors carrying mobiles allow the range of museum exhibit design possibilities to be expanded. In particular, we see opportunities for using mobiles to help exhibits scale up to support variable-sized groups of visitors, and to support collaborative visitor-visitor interactions. Because exhibit use is generally one-time-only, any interfaces created for these purposes must be easily learnable, or visitors may not use the exhibit at all. To guide the design of learnable mobile interfaces, we chose to employ the Consistency design
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Priscilla Jimenez PazminoLeilah Lyons
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This poster session showcases ten examples of expertise development in everyday domains of personal relevance and consequence to learners. The collection of cases highlighted in the posters stem from ethnographic research studies investigating learning from socio-cultural-historical perspectives. In each poster, authors describe their ethnographic project, explicate a case of expertise development, and detail the specific learning processes, practices, and pathways associated with that expertise development. Implications for understanding personally relevant and consequential learning for the
Journey into Space (JIS) is designed to improve student, educator, and general public understanding of earth/space science and its relationship to NASA goals and objectives through the use of a traveling GeoDome (inflatable planetarium) and engaging supporting programming at The Journey Museum. The Museum collaborates with area colleges, school districts, K-12 educators, youth serving organizations, astronomical affiliations, and others. The overall goal of JIS is to improve student, educator, and general public understanding of STEM and its relationship to NASA goals and objectives. JIS objectives are: 1) To increase student and public interest and awareness in STEM areas; 2) To increase student interest in pursuing STEM careers; 3) To improve teacher knowledge of NASA related science; 4) To increase teacher comfort level and confidence in teaching NASA related science in their classrooms; 5) To increase collaboration between informal and formal science educators; 6) To increase student and public understanding of Plains Indians ethno astronomy; and 7) To increase museum visitors’ interest and understanding of NASA related science. The Museum produced 2 films (“Cradle of Life”, “Looney Moons”) that are offered daily, 4 recurring monthly programs (Final Frontier Friday, Amazing Science, SciGirls that became Science Explorer’s Club, and Black Hills Astronomical Society meetings), summer robotics classes and teachers’ workshops, annual Earth Science Day, in addition to the GeoDome programming that has toured the region including presentations in the three poorest counties in the United States. The ethno-astronomy is underway in partnership with Oglala Lakota College and South Dakota Space Grant Consortium.
This report summarizes the content and shares ideas coming out of a convening organized in September, 2013 by the Alliance and The Henry Ford. Essays by educators, students, researchers and reformers explore how leaders from the worlds of education and museums can work together to integrate the nation’s assets into a Vibrant Learning Grid. Produced with the support of the Robert and Toni Bader Foundation.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Center for the Future of MuseumsElizabeth Merritt