On June 20-22, 2008, the Philadelphia/Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative (PISEC) conducted the Bridges Conference for museum/community partnership programs that serve families. The conference was funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (DRL# 0734835), which covered planning, implementation, evaluation and dissemination. The Bridges Conference was designed to bring together professionals involved with long-term museum/community relationships, and to offer opportunities to share and develop new strategies to (1) address practical issues inherent in funding, developing
The following are interviews with people whose long-term involvement with the PISEC program has been life-changing. Most started as participants, with or without friends and family, and over time became PISEC leaders. Most of those profiled here are parents. Because PISEC programs are geared to families, these parents brought their children to events starting at a very young age. As their children grew up in PISEC, they too, became involved with the program. In some cases, children took on leadership roles of their own; in other cases, children’s interest in science activities and studies grew
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Philadelphia-Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative (PISEC)Minda BorunBarbara Martin KellyLisa Jo Rudy
Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are non-technical illustrated public lectures, presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers over the years have included a Nobel-prize winner, members of the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman in history to discover a planet, an astrophysicist who is an award-winning science fiction writer, and many other well-known scientists explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is jointly sponsored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the SETI Institute, NASA's Ames Research Center, and the Foothill College Astronomy Program. In-kind funding and staff time is contributed by the sponsoring organizations. The lectures are held and videotaped in the 950-seat Smithwick Theater in Los Altos Hills. Thanks to a generous grant from an anonymous local donor, each lecture is now video and audio taped, professionally edited, and made available free of charge on a number of web sites. Videotaped lectures include: * Frank Drake discussing his modern view of the Drake Equation, * Sandra Faber on how galaxies were "cooked" from the primordial soup, * Michael Brown explaining how his discovery of Eris led to the demotion of Pluto, * Alex Filippenko talking about the latest ideas and observations of black holes, * Natalie Batalha sharing the latest planet discoveries from the Kepler mission, * Anthony Aguirre discussing how it is possible to have multiple universes, and * Chris McKay updating the Cassini discoveries about Saturn's moon Titan.
The Chester County intermediate Unit developed strong collaborations between school districts and informal education providers across Pennsylvania to engage thousands of students in high quality learning experiences. NASA will support these partnering institutions as they engage local teachers in professional development in high quality instruction during the school year. Requirements for both summer activities and school year activities necessitates cooperative agreements with secondary education partners to ensure fulfilling participation requirements such as reaching a large number of middle school students and teachers. The CCIU has many potential partners in the PA SoI project who have expressed interest in participating; including Carnegie-Mellon Robotics Academy, Cheyney University, Widener University, the Philadelphia School District, the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the NASTAR flight facility. With a renewed effort by the CCIU the PA Summer of Innovation Program will be implemented through the PAIU NET to provide quality STEM programming to students and STEM training to teachers while monitoring student outcomes. In Eastern PA camps will be held August 1-5 at 36 sites in the 20 participating school districts statewide. In Chester County, camp sites include Gordon Elementary School and Pope John Paul II Regional Catholic School. Additionally several NASA SoI Mini-Camps were held increasing the breath and depth of the program's impact.
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Chester County Intermediate UnitJohn Hall
This article focuses on collective impact, the idea that large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination rather than a focus on isolated interventions in individual organizations. The article lays out five conditions that help organizations collaborate--a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organization.
Currently, science is developing rapidly and its influence on society is more significant than ever. This is all the more reason for today's scientists to interact with the general public. To design effective science communication activities, we must understand scientists' motivations and barriers to publicly communicating science. In this study, we interviewed 19 early-career scientists who had participated in science cafes in Japan. From these interviews, we identified five factors leading to their reluctance to participate in science cafes: 1) troublesome or time consuming; 2) pressure to
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Eri MizumachiKentaro MatsudaKei KanoMasahiro KawakamiKazuto Kato
The NEES network is comprised of a central management office (NEEScomm) located at Purdue University, and 14 geographically distributed earthquake and tsunami research facilities. We are considered to be a Large Facility within the Engineering division. We have been responsible for the coordination of centralized education, outreach and training activities at each of theses research facilities plus assessment of these activities. We have conducted a very successful REU program for the past 5 years. Additionally we maintain a repository of education modules and learning objects available on our website.
LIGO's Science Education Center is in charge of Education and Public Outreach Component for the LIGO Livingston Observatory. The three prime efforts are: (1) Professional development for teachers utilizing lab facilities and cross-institute collaborations. (2) Outreach to students K-16 (targeting 5- 9th grade), with on-site field trips to the LIGO Lab and Science Education Center, as well as off-site visits & presentations. (3) Outreach to the general public and community groups with on-site tours and Science Education Center Experience, as well as off=site visits and presentations. LIGO's Science Education Center is located at the LIGO Observatory, and has an auditorium, a classroom and a 5000 square foot exhibit hall with interactive exhibits at its disposal to complete its mission. In addition LIGO-SEC staff serve to help press and documentary film makers complete their missions in telling the "LIGO story" and encouraging budding scientists.
NESCent’s Education & Outreach efforts are designed and developed to improve evolution education and public understanding of evolutionary science, expand opportunities for underrepresented groups, and contribute to professional development of tomorrow’s evolutionary biologists. Our programs and initiatives serve a diverse array of audiences (students, faculty, general public) at a variety of levels (K-12, undergraduate/graduate/postdoc, informal science education).
The Observatory’s “Education and Outreach” (EDU) capability is designed to facilitate the interface between the Observatory and communities of users. Ultimately, our goal is to empower people to effectively use NEON data to enable understanding of continental-scale ecological change over time. To ensure that NEON science/data products are accessible to and usable by diverse communities, including scientists, students, educators, citizen scientists, decision-makers and the interested general public, we provide a suite of online data-centric resources/tools, workshops, a variety of courses, internship/research programs for undergraduates, and citizen science projects.
Several major international studies recognize that children (and adults) pursue lifelong STEM interests and understandings, in and out of school, using a variety of community resources and networks. In most communities though, these resources are not well connected with one another, nor is there understanding on the ground of how children and adults can best access and use these resources to support their lifelong STEM interests and learning. The SYNERGIES project is predicated on the assumption that better understanding how 10-14 year old youth become interested and engaged with STEM (or not) across settings, time and space, will make possible a more coordinated network of educational opportunities, involving many partners in and out of school, and in the process, create a community-wide, research-based educational system that is more effective and synergistic. Using the under-resourced Parkrose community of Portland, Oregon as a case-study, the SYNERGIES team has been longitudinally studying the STEM interest and participation pathways of 200 youth for four years. Data from this investigation formed the foundation for a community-wide, multi-year STEM education improvement plan jointly developed by the schools, after-school providers, museums, libraries, parks, colleges, parents and businesses.
There is a widely acknowledged, urgent need for improving and increasing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills among our citizenry and students to navigate the modern world and access the opportunities it affords. The need for a more STEM literate workforce has been discussed in respected reports such as “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” from the National Academies, and data on the workforce show clear benefits of a STEM‐related post secondary education in the current job market. This brief from the Afterschool Alliance explores the impacts and outcomes of afterschool STEM