This Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project is for promoting public understanding of and engagement with STEM by developing and implementing technology and formats for interactive exhibitions at the interface of underwater robotics and marine science. This program envisions the use of BRUCE (Bioinspired Robotic Underwater Carangiform Exhibit) featuring a shoal of ROSAs (Remotely Operated Swimming Avatars) at the River Project to engage the local New York City community and echo to the broader U.S. non-technical audience in marine science and technology. More specifically, this program is expected to put kids and adults behind the wheel of miniature robotic fish that can swim alone, school in groups, and compete against each other under the remote control of the audience. To further attract youngsters to the exhibit, an application for an iDevice, that is, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, for controlling the robotic fish while seeing through its eyes will be developed. This is a cooperative venture between New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the River Project.
In the following pages I describe what happens when an exhibit dense in local meanings enters the national arena. The Yup'ik mask exhibit Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer) began as visual repatriation—bringing objects out of museums back into a local context—and ended as a tribal exhibit displayed in three very different majority institutions, including an American Indian museum, a natural history museum, and an art museum. The mask exhibit was developed as a three-way collaboration between Yup'ik community members, an anthropologist, and museum professionals. As it traveled farther
This study investigated middle school students’ identity development as learners of science during learning conversations at an informal science education camp. The central research question was: What is the role of conversation in influencing science learner identity development during an informal science education camp? Identity in this study was defined as becoming and being recognized as a certain type of person (Gee, 2001). This study focused particularly on discursive identity, defined as individual traits recognized through discourse with other individuals (Gee, 2005; 2011). The study
Although schools traditionally take their pupils to Natural History Museums, little has been elicited about either the overall content of the conversations generated by such groups or of the effect on content in the presence of an adult. Transcripts were coded using a systemic network which had been designed based on pilot studies. A range of variables was created from the coded data. The number of conversations that contained at least one reference to the designated categories were ascertained overall and those of the three sub-groups, pupils and teacher, pupils and chaperone and pupils alone
This paper explores the role of questioning in scientific meaning-making as families talk, look and gesture in front of realistic and artful dioramas at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The focus is on the ways questioning can either enable movement towards scientific understanding or hinder such progress. The socio-cultural framework of this research emphasizes Vygotsky's interpretation of the zone of proximal development (zpd). Questions are viewed as tools for mediation in the zpd. This paper examines three families' dialogues, excerpted from a larger study of collaborative
This chapter explores natural history exhibits, particularly dioramas, with regard to both art and authenticity. Dioramas are treated as a novel form of scientific model.
This study evaluates the Living Land Living Sea exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum, with specific attention to gathering data related to visitor response to dioramas. The results of this study indicated that small but significant amounts of knowledge gain did occur upon visiting the Living Land Living Sea gallery, that attitudinal change was not measured, and that exhibit type clearly affects attracting power and holding power.
Interviews conducted during the summer of 2006 with people in and around the international museum community suggest that the interests natural history museums share in common with each other and with other kinds of organizations and communities are creating an array of new links across institutional, social and cultural boundaries. These links are active, complex, networked relationships directed toward common purposes. Museums that are taking advantage of this emerging environment are becoming “hyperconnected hubs” across which knowledge is exchanged and action initiated. In forging a
This report presents findings based on the largest and most international study of zoo and aquarium visitors ever conducted worldwide. The study used a pre- and post-visit repeated-measures survey design to evaluate biodiversity literacy - biodiversity understanding and knowledge of actions to help protect biodiversity - in zoo and aquarium visitors. In total, more than 6,000 visitors to 30 zoos and aquariums around the globe participated in the study. Appendix contains survey.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
World Association of Zoos and AquariumsAndrew MossEric JensenMarkus Gusset
The Maryland Science Center (MSC) Astrobiology project includes an interactive exhibit and Davis Planetarium program for school and public museum visitors, exploring the search for life in our Solar System, the search for exoplanets and an understanding of extreme forms of Earthly life. Four day-long Educator Workshops have taken place during the project with a total of 179 teachers participating.
Baltimore’s MSC is the lead institution, with the project led by PI Van Reiner, MSC President and CEO and Co-PI Jim O’Leary, MSC Senior Scientist, and science advisors consisting of astronomers, biologists, a geologist and educators representing NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Space Telescope Science Institute, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland and Maryland School for the Blind.
The project provides visitors with a sense of the Milky Way Galaxy’s size and composition, the galaxy’s number of stars and potential planets, and the number of other galaxies in the Universe. The exhibit explores Earthly extremophiles, what their survival signifies for life elsewhere in the Solar System, and examines possibilities for life on Mars and moons of the Solar System, explores techniques used to detect exoplanets and NASA’s missions searching for exoplanets and Earth-like worlds. The project looks to provide a sense of the vast number of potential planets that exist, the hardiness of Earthly life, the possibilities for life on nearby planets and moons, and the techniques used to search for exoplanets.
The exhibit and Planetarium program premiered November 2, 2012, and both remain as long-term Science Center offerings. Since opening, MSC has hosted nearly a million visitors, and with the Life Beyond Earth exhibit located in a highly trafficked area near the Davis Planetarium and Science On a Sphere, the great majority of visitors have experienced the exhibit. The We Are Aliens program in the Davis Planetarium has been seen by more than 26,000 visitors since opening.
The author discusses her experiences in utilizing a sixth-grade Earth science field trip for students as an active research project. She examines a research project assignment conducted on the Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The author suggests that the use of active research can be applied to any museum or exhibit in the U.S.
The author discusses practices in running a university natural history museum. He notes that standards and customs in exhibits have changed, but suggests that there is value in keeping older exhibits as they are and highlighting the principles by which they were made. He notes that natural history museums have been focused on attracting children since the 1960s. He gives recommendations for keeping them child-centered but attracting adults as well. These include emphasizing the aesthetic side of the exhibits and being respectful of the work of prior generations, not attempting to compete with