The goal of this evaluation was to assess issues of user friendliness, appeal and comprehension related to the Cyberchase website’s homepage, web adventures, weekly polls and games. Cyberchase is the Emmy Award-winning mathematics series and website on PBS KIDS GO! using broadcast, web, new media and educational outreach to impact millions nationwide. Designed for children ages 8 to 11 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, Cyberchase’s mission is to improve kids' problem-solving and math skills, and inspire them with confidence and enthusiasm toward math. The TV series airs daily on PBS
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barbara FlaggSandra SheppardCarey BolsterMichael TempletonThirteen/WNET
The goal of the SISCOM program is to improve science achievement of economically disadvantaged middle school students in science, through the development, implementation, and dissemination of a replicable, model program for use with underserved youth, especially girls, in informal educational settings. A number of programs and interventions geared toward bolstering the STEM interest and achievement of urban youth have been implemented across the country. Key elements that have proven to be successful have been incorporated into the SISCOM program include the longevity of intervention
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Penny L. Hammrich, Ph.D.Kathy Fadigan, Ed.D.Judy Stull, Ph.D.
Produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and Nelvana International, the Award-winning series CYBERCHASE is the only mathematics series for children on American television. Designed for kids ages 8 to 12 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, each episode delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a fun way that kids can understand. To inform the design of a planned major study of children's learning from multiple media (using materials from the mathematics series Cyberchase), a small-scale, quasi-experimental pilot study was conducted with 47 children in the third and fourth
Produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and Nelvana International, the Award-winning series CYBERCHASE is the only mathematics series for children on American television. Designed for kids ages 8 to 12 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, each episode delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a fun way that kids can understand. To assess the impact of Cyberchase on children's mathematical problem solving, MediaKidz Research & Consulting conducted summative research using an experimental/control, pretest/posttest design. Participants were 108 third- and fourth-grade
This report describes a summative evaluation of Secrets of Circles, a 2,600 square foot exhibition created by Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and funded by the National Science Foundation. The exhibition and related programs were designed to highlight the uses of circles and wheels in everyday life. Circles have properties that make them extremely effective as an engineering tool, and they are ubiquitous in cultures around the world. The appendix of this report inclues interview and observation protocols and questionnaires used in this study.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sue AllenChildren's Discovery Museum of San Jose
In MIT’s NSF-funded Terrascope Youth Radio (TYR) program, urban youth, many from groups historically underrepresented in the sciences, worked as paid interns who received training in radio production, reporting and writing stories with scientific content and audio storytelling to create environmentally oriented audio pieces that were engaging and relevant to their own and their peers’ lives. Teen interns participated between July 2008 and Autumn 2012. TYR’s goals were to improve a broad audience of teens’ engagement with, knowledge of, and attitudes about science, technology, engineering, and
The 2010 Cyberchase Summer Challenge Outreach initiative was designed to allow local public television stations to develop community-appropriate outreach plans as part of a unique summer launch of a new season of shows for a PBS children's television program. The Cyberchase Summer Challenge was a national initiative; eight stations were selected for a pilot study of best practices related to summer programming. Grantee stations were provided modest funding and material support. RMC's evaluation focused on understanding how public television stations and their outreach partners can build
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alice ApleyWendy GrahamElizabeth GoldmanThirteen/WNET New York
There is a recognized need to rigorously examine the efficacy of approaches to supporting informal learning. In this study, we used a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design to test the impact of a computer guide on 3 proximal measures of visitor learning at an interactive math exhibit. In total, 128 families were systematically assigned to engage with the exhibit either with or without access to a supplementary computer kiosk. Visitor groups with access to the computer spent longer, on average, at the exhibit and engaged in more mathematical behaviors compared to other groups. However, based on
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryScott PattisonScott EwingAngela Frey
Poster on NSF grant DRL-1114663 (3D Visualization Tools For Enhancing Awareness, Understanding, And Stewardship Of Freshwater Ecosystems) from the 2012 ISE PI Meeting.
Poster on NSF grant DRL-1008546 (""The Handheld Signing Math & Science Dictionaries for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Museum Visitors Research Project"") at the 2012 ISE PI Meeting.