Impact of GLC On Teachers Over the four years of the project, GLC worked with 171 teachers and 7schools. The program had a dramatically positive impact on the teachers involved. The GLC staff did an excellent job of establishing relationships with participating teachers, teaching them to use Lesson Study techniques and how to use the school garden as a resource for learning and creativity. As a result, teachers' overall attitudes towards teaching improved. Lessons became more flexible and useful across the curriculum. The teachers involved were seen by GLC staff to have made observable
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Minda BorunUniversity of California Botanical Garden
Media MashUp (MMU) was an IMLS funded project (LG-07-08-0113 ) designed to help libraries build capacity for offering computer-based programs for youth. These programs were designed to help foster 21st Century literacy skills. The program focused on the Scratch programming language (http://scratch.mit.edu/), but also used other creative freeware programs (i.e., Audacity, Picasa, SAM animation, ArtRage). MMU was a partnership among six library systems from around the country and The Science Museum of Minnesota. Three staff members from each library participated in the program: two librarians or
The Media MashUp project is funded by the IMLS (Grant LG-07-08-0113 ) to build capacity at libraries for computer-based programs for youth that help build 21st Century literacy skills. Twenty first Century literacy skills include interactive engagement with technology, collaboration and team problem solving, taking initiative and managing time and the use of higher level processing skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org/). This project uses the Scratch programming platform (http://scratch.mit.edu/) developed at MIT to help foster youth's 21st Century literacy skills. The professional audience
Knight Williams Research Communications (Knight Williams, Inc), an independent evaluation firm specializing in the development and evaluation of science education media, conducted the summative evaluation for Ice Stories. The evaluation focused on the extent to which the project achieved the goals described in the Exploratorium's grant to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Research and Education, Antarctic Coordination and Information program within the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL). The NSF DRL program provided funding for both the project
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie Knight-WilliamsExploratoriumDivan WilliamsChristina MeyersOra GrinbergTal SraboyantsEveen ChanDavid Tower
In October 2009, the Tennessee Aquarium began an ambitious program, Connecting Tennessee to the World Ocean (CTWO), funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. CTWO consists of several individual projects, all intended to increase the ocean literacy of Aquarium audiences and to promote their adoption of an ocean stewardship ethic. This formative evaluation report summarizes the extent to which the Aquarium has made progress toward these goals in the first year of the project and provides an information base for identifying opportunities to strengthen
The Citizen Science Central site developed by CLO clearly meets its goal of providing guidance and resources to individuals and organizations engaged in, or interested in undertaking, citizen science, volunteer monitoring, or participatory action research initiatives. The site embodies the ideas and insights generated by the Citizen Science Toolkit conference. In terms of the evaluation objectives, the evidence from the user surveys show that the site meets both of the standards listed below. Ease of use, sufficiency, and appropriateness of Citizen Science Central content Quality and
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Stephanie ThompsonCornell University
Veridian inSight performed an evaluation study in fall of 2009 to evaluate the effectiveness of an online training developed as an outreach component of the FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman series (http://pbskids.org/fetch/). The FETCH! Hands-On Science Training was designed for anyone who wants to lead science activities with elementary-age kids (including after-school providers, teachers, camp counselors, librarians, museum staff, parents, and others). The goals of the evaluation study were to assess the extent to which the FETCH! training was successful at:· Preparing afterschool educators
This report summarizes findings from Inverness Research's evaluation of the PIE Institute project. It outlines the project's approach and philosophy, the activities of the project and key features, and the contributions of the project to participating museum educators, their institutions, and the larger field of informal science education institutions.
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences project focuses on the Reedy Glacier Antarctic research of Brenda Hall (OPP 0229034) and its relevance to the residents of and visitors to Maine. Collaborators include the University of Maine, the Maine Discovery Museum, the Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain Sports (an environmentally active retail company with several stores around the state). The primary deliverable is the development of an interactive software program that presents information and experiences in a two-tiered concept approach -- on the Reedy Glacier and its connection to Maine and on the process of science. The software is being configured into kiosks at the three partnering organizations, into a DVD format for informal and formal settings to be distributed at cost and onto a University of Maine Climate Change web portal currently under separate development. The project web site will provide source code for the portal design so others may use it to create portals and modules of their own. The Maine Discovery Museum intends to create additional exhibitry on the topic with resources outside this proposal, and the Acadia National Park will use the programs in teacher education workshops.
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Brenda HallMolly Schauffler
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
These opening remarks took place at the start of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference, held at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007.
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Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This PDF includes a synthesis of presentations and discussions that took place at the Engaging and Learning for Conservation Workshop on Public Participation in Scientific Research, held at the American Museum of Natural History on April 7 & 8, 2011. In a series of introductory presentations, participants are offered an overview of workshop goals and session formats, as well as opening thoughts on public participation in scientific research, illustrated by brief presentations of four project case studies. Co-PI Rick Bonney provides an overview of the state of the field, including early work on