This document is the final evaluation report for the project, which focuses both on formative evaluation of the collaborative+interdisciplinary presentation creation process and summative evaluation of audience learning outcomes.
Nothing generates excitement like sound! From the iconic guitar riffs in Led Zeppelin’s famous song “Stairway to Heaven” to birds energetically singing (way too early in the morning) outside my bedroom window, nonscientists can relate to acoustics. Many of us entered the field because we love music, a passion evident at the jam sessions that accompany many meetings of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Science communication enables us to share that enthusiasm with nontechnical audiences.
The goal of this article is to introduce fundamental ideas in science communication and resources
The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of Comics & Science workshops where forty-one teenagers (designated Trainee Science Comic Authors [TSCAs]) are asked to create a one-page comic strip based on a scientific presentation given by a PhD student. Instrumental genesis is chosen as the conceptual framework to characterize the interplay between the specific characteristics of a comic and the pieces of scientific knowledge to be translated. Six workshops were conducted and analyzed. The results show that the TSCAs followed the codes that are specific to the comic strip medium and took
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Cecile de HossonLaurence BordenavePierre-Laurent DauresNicolas DecampChristophe HacheJulie HoroksNassima GuediriEirini Matalliotaki
The STEM + Digital Literacies (STEM+L) project investigates science fiction composing as an effective mechanism to attract and immerse adolescents (ages 10-13) from diverse cultural backgrounds in socio-scientific issues related to environment.
The participating students (G5-8) work in small groups to design and produce STEM content rich, multimedia science fictions during the summer (1 week) and the academic year (4-6 2.5hr sessions). Culminating activities include student presentations at a local science fiction film festival.
The research component employs an iterative, design-based
Nowadays, India is experiencing a widespread diffusion of science communication activities. Public institutions, non-governmental organisations and a number of associations are busy spreading scientific knowledge not only via traditional media but also through specific forms of interaction with a varied public. This report aims to provide a historical overview of the diffusion of science communication in India, illustrating its current development and its future prospects.
Small Matters is a scientific storytelling project in response to a supplemental funding opportunity designed to pair an NSF Center for Chemical Innovation with an Informal Science Education organization. Meisa Salaita, Director for Education & Outreach for the Center for Chemical Evolution, and Ari Daniel, independent radio and multimedia producer and science journalist, collaborated on this project designed to increase chemical literacy in the general public and promote partnerships between scientists and informal science educators. In the tradition of folklore, educators have used storytelling to stimulate students’ critical thinking skills across and within disciplines, demonstrating an improvement in comprehension and logical thinking, enhancing memory, and creating a motivation and enthusiasm for learning. Within science, storytelling allows learners to experience the how of scientific inquiry, including the intellectual and human struggles of the scientists who are making discoveries. Accordingly, our project uses multimedia and live performance to engage the public in learning about chemistry through storytelling. We have developed a series audio pieces entitled Small Matters aimed at enriching public science literacy, namely within the chemical sciences. The format of these pieces includes standard public radio narrative style, short scientist-narrated nuggets, and imaginative sonic explorations of key chemistry concepts. The stories have been disseminated through a variety of broadcast media connections, including "Living on Earth" and local Atlanta public radio station WABE. In addition to the audio-based science journalism pieces that we have been producing, we have taken the stories we uncovered and brought them to live audiences, integrating chemistry, journalism, and the arts to create a human connection between our scientists and the public. The radio pieces were woven in with performances of poetry, comedy and satire in collaboration with literary performing arts group The Encyclopedia Show to create a live variety show (May 2013). In addition, scientists identified through our production of Small Matters were trained in storytelling techniques and brought together for an evening of live storytelling in Atlanta with The Story Collider (March 2014).
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
NSF/NASA Center for Chemical EvolutionMeisa Salaita
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF),The STEM Pathways project focused on exploring strategies through which at-risk and incarcerated Hispanic youth could be engaged around STEM careers, understand the education, training, and skills they would need to attain them, and think that such a path was a future possibility. To this end, the project and evaluation teams collaborated on a literature review, the development of a logic model, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of a diverse set of program activities that included media, art, and flash mentoring with STEM role models
The Exploding Optic Incredible was an experiment in expanding the boundaries of art and music with science and technology. Ostensibly a multi-media rock concert as a fund raiser for Marshall Barnes' drug free creativity efforts, it took Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable concept of the 1960s into unchartered territory driven by Marshall's inspiration through discussions with Omni magazine's Dick Teresi and Pamela Weintraub and Gene Youngblood's book, Expanded Cinema. Marshall incorporated 1970s era slide and film projection light show effects, with dance lights, massive strobes, spotlights, and big screen video projection that showed customized and original video special effects while bands performed, and music videos in-between accompanied by lighting effects. The first multi-media rock concert of the 1990s, the January 18, 1990 event at the Newport Music Hall was also a test for the public's reaction to over stimulation through sight and sound, the results leading to exploration and ultimate creation of psychoactive entertainment technology later that year and the formation of new technological architectures for entertainment and learning that have yet to be presented but exist in design form.
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock, founder of the USA Science and Engineering Festival as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall was given free booth space to set-up an exhibit that featured what is now being called "STEAM" or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and was fairly interactive. Marshall's booth emphasized his actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window. There were four elements to the exhibit. There was a TV monitor that showed a scene from a movie that you could view with 3D glasses for TV that Marshall invented that work even with one eye closed. At different times that same monitor would feature footage from an experiment that Marshall conducted to produce one of Nikola Tesla's ideas that Tesla never accomplished - a wall of light. This same footage could be analyzed by the visitors - frame by frame, on the Mac computer to see exactly how the principle of resonance produced the wall of light from the build-up of reflections off a physical wall created by strobe lights. Visitors could also listen to hyperdimensional music that Marshall produced that takes any kind of music to a new listening experience. Based on the concept that music is a coded language with cues and instructions that are cognitively recognizable when translated, Marshall invented techniques and technologies that allow such translations and brought examples for visitors to listen to. They included an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music featured song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive. The most dramatic of all was the Visual Reduction Window, again invented by Marshall, that made kids look transparent and at times, almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency is stunning and Marshall, the world's leading expert on invisibility research was able to describe the physics behind what he was doing and its applications in the real world. His approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others, trying to do the same with metamaterials, and is based on a completely different model of invisibility that he calls, Visual Density Reduction or VDR. Using VDR techniques, Marshall can make attack helicopters, small gun boats, tanks and many other things invisible, which is why he doesn't reveal the current level of his research, due to National Security reasons. Overall, the exhibit was a wild success and serves as a model for a traveling exhibit for informal science at malls, fairs, science centers, and other festivals.