The National Zoological Park, a component of the Smithsonian Institution, proposes transforming three traditional zoo exhibit buildings into centers for informal science learning. Based on current knowledge about learning, the proposed project will feature interactive elements as well as the greater use of human interpreters to help visitors examine animals, handle objects and play games. The project is to be a collaborative effort by the National Zoological Park, the Dallas Zoo and Zoo Atlanta, with the National Zoo developing the materials and making and shipping copies to Dallas and Atlanta as centers for tryout and evaluation, with the results of the studies going to other zoos in way of encouraging them of the importance of interactive science education.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Judith WhiteJames MurphyDale MarcelliniJeffrey Swanagan
Acting on behalf of a group of academic, educational and public-service organizations the University of California-Santa Barbara proposes to improve aquatic science education in informal settings that include youth-service organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, YMCA, YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs and 4-H. The specific emphasis will be on the close interdependence between humans and the aquatic environment and on the need for enlightened social action in defense of that environment. The thrusts of the project will be to establish the California Aquatic Science Education Consortium; to develop multiple copes of sets of instructional materials on topic of aquatic science appropriate for informal educational settings; and to develop a program for training a cadre of trainers who in turn will train volunteers in the use of the materials. The program has a significant potential for broader national application.
The Field Museum of Natural History proposes to design and construct an Animal Resource Center of 24,000 square feet in the context of its encompassing larger exhibit, "Diversity and Survival in the Animal Kingdom." The Center will capitalize on the museum synoptic collections of animal mounts and models and will interpret these irreplaceable specimens in ways that will introduce central biological themes in ecology and evolution. The exhibit conjunctively will use a wide variety of learning techniques to appeal to the varied audience. The museum anticipates that the exhibit will serve fifteen million visitors over the next twenty years and that it may serve as a cost-effective model for other natural-science museums.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael SpockDebra MoskovitsBarbara Becker
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is developing an innovative exhibit and teaching laboratory called INTERACTIONS. The unique feature of INTERACTIONS is the combination of an exploratory, interactive natural science exhibit with an adjacent live-insect-rearing laboratory. The exhibits will give the visitors some of the exploratory tools and experiences of the scientist and involve them in the process of scientific discovery. The laboratory will provide visitors with direct experience with scientists and involve them in the scientific process. Ecological in scope, INTERACTIONS will communicate environmental issues. The museum's plant and insect halls, designed over thirty years ago, will be renovated totally. In their place, a single, large exhibit and teaching laboratory will be created focusing on the interactions of insects and plants. The exhibits, videos, computer stations, and adjacent insect rearing laboratory will invite visitors to participate, question and examine. This combination of exhibits, hands-on activities, video, and laboratory will increase the retention of information, stimulate interests in natural science, and give vitality to the museum experience. The total cost of renovation, modernizing, exhibit construction and installation is $1,340,000 with $1,000,000 raised by a vigorous capital campaign. This request is for the balance of $340,000 to complete the exhibit construction.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dennis PowerCatherine WoolseyNorman IkedaJohn Torkington
This project at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, Durham, North Carolina, will create a 2000 square foot permanent exhibition, "The Science Behind Medicine", using recent advances in medical science and technology to illustrate basic science concepts. It will engage visitors through their strong interest in health and medicine, present valuable information about medical subjects, and use their interest to present underlying scientific concepts they would otherwise avoid. The exhibition will be organized around four topics: organ structure and function and organ replacement and transplantation; advances in medical imaging, including infrared, ultrasound and x-ray technologies; pharmaceutical pharmacology, biological receptors and molecular design; and sickle cell anemia and its molecular biology. Over five years, more than one million people will use the exhibit, including both highly educated residents of the Research Triangle area, and a Durham population that is disadvantaged and 50% black. Extensive subject area consultation and formative evaluation will be used in exhibition design. A close consulting relationship is planned with two museums with similar exhibit interests, and exhibit research and plans will be offered to other interested museums to encourage wider use of the project's results. A strong regional health sciences focus will benefit the project through academic, business, community and industry membership on a project planning committee, and from 50% local matching funding. Two corporate planning grants have been awarded to the project, and a major facilities expansion funded in part by a recent bond issue.
WNET/Thirteen will produce a series of 10 one hour public television programs, "CHILDHOOD" that will explore how children grow and develop,and how parents and societies have raised children throughout history and across cultures. Extensive use of current research and scholarships from the disciplines of developmental and cognitive psychology, anthropology and sociology, education, history and culture will be used to create a coherent and revealing view of childhood development. The series will be heavily promoted on public television, will be accompanied by a trade book and viewer's guide, and should generate audiences of more than 10 million viewers in its first series airing, based on prior experience with the producers prior series, "The Brain"; the accompanying trade book sold more than 150,000 copies. The producers of this series are highly skilled at the interpretation of complex scientific subjects on television, with a number of award-winning series to their credit. They have assembled an prestigious international team of advisors and consultants. WNET has a realistic plan for raising the $7.5 million necessary to complete the project from the PBS/CPB Superfund, corporations, and co-production agreements. An award of $200,000 in FY 87 and continuing funding of $200,000 in FY 88 based on satisfactory progress is recommended.
The Museum of Science in Boston proposes a major modification of its permanent New England Wildlife Zones exhibition hall in order to improve its effectiveness with visitors with impaired sight, hearing, or mobility. They will document and share with other museums the successful methods and techniques used in the exhibition development process is an effort to improve barrier free access in the country's more than 600 science and natural history museums. The museum has completed a preliminary needs assessment with the assistance of handicapped consultants, developed alternative design solutions to problems of limited accessibility and effectiveness for the hall's existing dioramas, and organized a design team that includes senior museum exhibition and education staff and a handicapped scientist and educator as Co-PI. The Massachusetts College of Art's Adaptive Environments Center will provide assistance in design for the handicapped and evaluation will be under the direction of George Hein, head of Lesley College's Program Evaluatlion and Research Group. Following an extensive design and evaluation process, new exhibit units will be constructed as educational adjuncts to the existing hall of dioramas, and the impact of the changes will be assessed, as part of a dissemination plan that will include popular and professional papers and a "how to" work book distributed to science museum exhibit designers with the assistance of the Association of Science Technology Centers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a challenging project with the opportunity for a significant impact on handicapped individuals who are often excluded from the motivational and informational resources of science and natural history museums by unnecessary design limitations. The Museum of Science's commitment is strong, the project staff are highly qualified, and there is active participation by handicapped individuals in the project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Larry BellCharles HowarthBetty Davidson
The Lawrence Hall of Science proposes to develop two 1400 square foot interactive exhibitions based on the latest research findings on the structure and function of the human brain; one for permanent display at the Hall, and one for circulation to 12 science museums over a five year period. The exhibition will use large scale models and equipment from two television programs on the brain. Substantial input from scientists and psychologists will be combined with the educational expertise of curriculum development, museum, and design staff from the Lawrence Hall of Science to create the exhibitions. Visitor and school related curriculum materials will be developed, including a video library and an auditorium show for large group school use. The Lawrence Hall of Science has more than 300,000 visitors per year and is a major science education research and development facility; the twelve host museums will reflect museums in both large and medium sized cities well distributed geographically. More than three million people will view the exhibits over a five year period. The topic is timely, the treatment substantive and educational, and the qualifications of staff and advisors high. The re-use and relationship to a major television series, "The Brain", is an ingenious and effective strategy. The Lawrence Hall of Science is matching the National Science Foundation contribution with comparable private funds. A 24-month FY87 award of $ is recommended.
The New York Hall of Science is the only major science center in the New York Metropolitan Area and serves a rapidly growing audience with both public and school-based programs and exhibits. Low income families and members of diverse minority communities are a major part of its target audience. The present award will support a major 3,000 square foot permanent exhibition on microbiology and microscopic organisms organized around themes of disease, its causes, prevention and cure, benign and beneficial microbial agents, and the nature of microscopic life. The exhibition will make extensive use of new microscopic display technologies for interactive exhibitry, with extensive formative evaluation and testing of principal exhibit components. Professional publications, an exhibit monograph and low cost videotapes will be used in national dissemination and a classroom kit based on the exhibit will be circulated widely throughout the New York Metropolitan area. This innovative project will form a significant part of the permanent exhibits of this newly reorganized science center. NSF support will constitute approximately 28% of the $ 1.3 million total project cost.
WGBH Boston and its NOVA production group will produce a series of eight one hour television programs titled "Life: Cracking the Code". The series will cover recent advances in molecular biology, the record of personal quest and achievement of many of the biologists who have contributed to these advances, the social costs and benefits that have resulted and the ethical questions that new knowledge and new abilities in biology have generated. Individual programs will include "The Language of Life" on the discovery of DNA's role in molecular biology, "Molecular Machines" on proteins; "Designing the World to Order" on practical consequences of the new biology, "When Cells Rebel" on the processes involved in cancer, and "Between Self and Other" on the immune function. The series will be produced for prime time PBS evening broadcast to an audience of more than twelve million individuals by a co- production by the NOVA science unit at WGBH and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. Scientific advice and consulting will be provided by Harvard's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a project advisory committee composed of seven distinguished scholars chaired by Prof. David Baltimore. The series production budget will be approximately $ 4.2 million. This new science series on DNA, molecular biology and its new technologies will cover one of the great intellectual achievements of our time. It will provide timely information about an area of scientific discovery that is rapidly transforming many aspects of our life. The series will, in addition, document the rich recent history of molecular biology with the participation of many of the original researchers who are still alive and active in their fields.
The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science proposes to build on its program of activities that involve children in science and bring them into contact with the approaches, objects and equipment that scientists use, with each activity designed to stimulate thinking and heighten interest in science. Cardinal features of the program are the development of hands-on exhibits, science kits for classroom use and a studied tie with the children's television program, "3-2-1 Contact." The goals are to coordinate these activities with hands-on science activities for students in grades 3-6, and to coordinate classroom activities with those at the museum, which conducts "3-2-1 Contact Days" throughout the year when students come to the museum and take part in experiments, observations and enrichment lessons and actively manipulate museum objects. The museum now will refine the program components, including improvement and duplication of the hands-on kits, continuation of the workshops for elementary teachers and development of new participatory exhibits dealing with insects and endangered species, and will present them to an expanded audience. One-third of the children in the state live below the poverty level, and fifty per cent represent minority populations. As most of these children lack such out-of-school experiences these informal science activities are particularly meaningful.
The American Museum of Natural History proposes to design and build a new permanent 9,000-square-foot Hall of Human Biology and Evolution over a three-year period. The exhibit is to start out with human biology and then move smoothly to human evolution and the fossil record and other evidences of early humans. The new exhibit will range from the molecular/genetic level to the emergence of human beings, and will include archeological excavations and findings, reconstruction and discussion of humanoids, early human evolution, human structure and function, and human diversity. In addition to stimulating the interests of visitors (2.7 million in 1986-87) in human biology and evolution through the use of traditional and interactive technology, the new exhibit program will provide curriculum supplement for elementary and high school classes and teacher-training guides and workshops to assist in the integration of the exhibition materials into classroom studies. The primary educational goal is to give the widest possible audience a concrete sense of where and how the human animal fits in the natural world through examination of the traits that we share with all creatures and those that are peculiar to humans. The exhibit promises further contribution by bridging the current exhibits on animal life and those on the rich ethnological collections on the diversity of human cultures. NSF dollars are to cover the costs only of planning, building and evaluating the exhibit, with no funds for staff.