This article highlights some of the diverse ways that different types of museums use place-based education to further their missions and benefit their audiences. Authors include Janet Petitpas, Assistant Director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Maggie Russell-Ciardi, Education Coordinator for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Lori Salles, Exhibit Manager at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, and Mary Jo Sutton, Director of Exhibitions at the Bay Area Discovery Museum.
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Janet PetitpasMaggie Russell-CiardiLori SallesMary Jo Sutton
The Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the Interdisciplinary Center for Coastal Studies, New York Botanical Garden, Puerto Rico Youth at Risk, Boy Scouts, and others implemented a citizen science program for age 12 and older. This project targeted local residents, visitors to Hacienda La Esperanza Reserve, and members of community environmental projects on topics including archeology and human impacts on local ecosystems; conservation and restoration of wetlands; and shoreline and costal processes.
This project will develop a comprehensive Space Weather Outreach program to reach students, educators, and other members of the public, and share with them the discoveries from this scientific discipline. The Space Science Institute will capitalize on its prior successes and the success of other education programs to develop a comprehensive and integrated program that has the following five components: (1) the Space Weather Center website that includes online educational games; (2) Small Exhibits for Libraries, Shopping Malls, and Science Centers; (3) After-School Programs; (4) Professional Development Workshops for Educators, and (5) an innovative Evaluation and Education Research project. Its overarching goal is to inspire, engage, and educate a broad spectrum of the public and make strategic and innovative connections between informal and K-12 education communities. Partners include UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory; the American Library Association; Macerich: a mall developer with nationwide impact; and the Math, Engineering, Science Achievement program. The project brings together a creative collaboration between exhibit designers, graphic artists, formal/informal educators, and research scientists. The project spans a full spectrum of science communication strategies (formal, informal, and public outreach). The evaluation part of the project will examine how well the project elements work together and a pilot research study will explore the efficacy of online digital games for communicating complex space weather content. Results will be published and the findings presented at professional meetings and online. The three-year project is expected to impact well over two million people, including exhibit and website visitors and outreach visitors at various venues such as libraries and malls.
The scientific community is challenged by the need to reach out to students who have traditionally not been attracted to engineering and the sciences. This project would provide a link between the University of Michigan and the teachers and students of secondary education in the State of Michigan with an initial emphasis on southeast Michigan, through the creation of a range of computer services which will provide interactive access to current weather and climate change information. Taking advantage of a unique computer network capacity within the State of Michigan named MichNet which provides local phone ports in virtually every major city in the state, and the resources available to the university community via the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) UNIDATA program, this project would provide secondary schools with access to a state-of-the-art interactive weather information system. The real-time data available via the system, supplemented by interactive computer modules designed in collaboration with earth science teachers, will provide animated background information on a range of climate and weather related topics. While the principal objective of this project will be to provide educationally stimulating interactive computer systems and electronic weather and climate modules for application in inner city Detroit and its environs, the unique nature of the available computer networking will allow virtually every school system in the state to have access. Subsequently successful completion of this project could eventually make the same systems available to other cities and states.
Gastineau Guiding Company created this exciting tour program to look for ways to foster connections between citizens and science. With the help of two local non-profits, the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program and the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation a tour with purpose was born. Our objectives include sampling phytoplankton to identify possible "red tide" outbreaks, contributing photographs to aid in the identification of area humpback whales and mammals, providing baseline data for several researchers throughout the state of Alaska, and contributing to online citizen science databases utilized by researchers around the country. During each summer season cruise line travelers' direct participation and observation can give a little something back, deepening our understanding of local wilderness and wildlife.
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National Great Rivers Research and Education CenterGastineau Guiding Company
Nature Abounds announces Watch the Wild™, a program where citizen science volunteers observe and report on the “wild” in your community, from trees and plants to weather and wildlife activity. By monitoring the "wild", observations can help us to understand how our eco-systems are changing and aids us in adapting for the future.
This Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring National Facilitation Project is designed to build a comprehensive support system for Extension-affiliated and other volunteer water quality monitoring efforts across the country. The goal is to expand and strengthen the capacity of existing volunteer monitoring programs and support development of new groups. We have developed a modular "Guide for Growing CSREES Volunteer Monitoring Programs" to direct you to resources and help you start asking questions that you’ll need to answer in order to create an effective program that meets the needs of your community. The Guide has been designed as a series of ‘chapters’ or modules that can be used alone or in conjunction with other modules. The Guide brings together the excellent resources produced by a wide variety of monitoring programs or agencies with numerous references and links to a wide variety of materials.
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United States Department of AgricultureUniversity of Rhode Island Cooperative ExtensionSalish-Kootenal CollegeUniversity of Wisconsin ExtensionLinda Green
The Vanessa Migration Project is a citizen science program that has been active since April 2001 as part of the Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site. Citizen observers in North America report their sightings of date, location, flight direction, and other activity of four butterflies of the genus Vanessa (V. atalanta, V. cardui, V. virginiensis, and V. annabella). Objectives include 1) monitoring butterflies and their yearly seasonal distribution; 2) tracking migrations and outbreaks; and 3) studying effects of weather and climatic patterns on butterfly activity.
GSWA's stream team monitors the 5 streams in the watershed through chemical and visual assessments. Training is required for all new volunteers. The primary goal of the chemical monitoring program is to measure the volume of water, nutrients and sediments flowing into the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. The main purpose of the visual assessment program is to help gather data for the Watershed Association and the State on waterbodies that are not currently being assessed by the NJDEP. All of this data helps to generate a picture of the overall health of our streams and help to identify areas where where water quality improvements could be made.
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Great Swamp Watershed AssociationKelley Curran
Stream Monitoring is a statewide program for Wisconsin citizens interested in learning about and improving the quality of Wisconsin’s streams and rivers. As a volunteer for monitoring through Beaver Creek Reserve Citizen Science Center, you will collect information once a month May through September from one of the numerous streams in the Lower Chippewa Basin. To become a volunteer, you will need to attend a day-long training session to learn how to measure and record the stream data. There are two levels for stream monitoring; level 2 monitoring requires additional training and you are assigned specific streams and times to monitor them.
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Beaver Creek ReserveWisconsin Department of Natural ResourcesSarah Braun
Each summer, a team of RHA staff members and volunteers collect samples of benthic macro-invertebrates, small critters whose presence indicate a stream’s health, at over fifty sites on streams and rivers in Hunterdon, Morris and Somerset Counties. Through our stream monitoring program, we gather valuable, usable data about surface water quality and the overall health of our watersheds.