The Science and Math Informal Learning Education (SMILE) pathway is serving the digital resource management needs of the informal learning community. The science and math inquiry experiences offered by science and technology centers, museums, and out-of-school programs are distinct from those found in formal classrooms. Interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations, virtual environments, hands-on activities, outdoor field guides, engineering challenges, and facilitated programs are just some of the thoughtfully designed resources used by the informal learning community to make science and math concepts come alive. With an organizational framework specifically designed for informal learning resources, the SMILE pathway is empowering educators to locate and explore high-quality education materials across multiple institutions and collections. The SMILE pathway is also expanding the participation of underrepresented groups by creating an easily accessible nexus of online materials, including those specifically added to extend the reach of effective science and math education to all communities. To promote the use of the SMILE pathway and the NSDL further, project staff are creating professional development programs and a robust online community of educators and content experts to showcase best practices tied to digital resources. Finally, to guarantee continued growth and involvement in the SMILE pathway, funding and editorial support is being provided to expansion partners, beyond the founding institutions, to add new digital resources to the NSDL.
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Scientists and researchers from fields as diverse as oceanography and ecology, astronomy and classical studies face a common challenge. As computer power and technology improve, the sizes of data sets available to us increase rapidly. The goal of this project is to develop a new methodology for using citizen science to unlock the knowledge discovery potential of modern, large data sets. For example, in a previous project Galaxy Zoo, citizen scientists have already made major contributions, lending their eyes, their pattern recognition skills and their brains to address research questions that need human input, and in so doing, have become part of the computing process. The current Galaxy Zoo project has recruited more than 200,000 participants who have provided more than 100 million classifications of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This project builds upon early successes to develop a mode of citizen science participation which involves not only simple "clickwork" tasks, but also involves participants in more advanced modes of scientific thought. As part of the project, a symbiotic relationship with machine learning tools and algorithms will be developed, so that results from citizen scientists provide a rich training set for improving algorithms that in turn inform citizen science modes of participation. The first phase of the project will be to develop a portfolio of pilot projects from astrophysics, planetary science, zoology, and classical studies. The second phase of the project will be to develop a framework - called the Zooniverse - to facilitate citizen scientists. In particular, research and machine-learning communities will be engaged to identify suitable projects and data sets to integrate into Zooniverse.
The ultimate goal with the Zooniverse is to create a sustainable future for large-scale, internet-based citizen science as part of every researcher?s toolkit, exemplifying a new paradigm in computational thinking, tapping the mental resources of a community of lay people in an innovative and complex manner that promises a profound impact on our ability to generate new knowledge. The project will engage thousands of citizens in authentic science tasks leading to a better public understanding of science and also, by the engagement of students, leading to interest in scientific careers.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Geza GyukPamela GayChristopher LintottMichael RaddickLucy FortsonJohn Wallin
The Space Science Institute is developing an astronomy educational social game for the Facebook platform. The game uses the "sporadic play" model popular with many Facebook games, in which players take only a few actions at a time, then return to explore the results. Here players will create their own stars and planetary systems that evolve over time at a rate of a million years a minute. Players set systems in motion, revisiting the game over days or weeks to make new choices and alter strategies. The game is in effect an end-to-end solar system simulation, following a star from birth to death. As a result it encompasses a wide variety of core concepts in astronomy, including galactic structure, stellar evolution and lifecycles, planetary formation and evolution, and habitability and "habitable zones." The accompanying research program will examine the effectiveness of this type of game in informal education, and the effects of the social network on meeting the education goals, including viral spread, cooperative play, and discussions about the game and its underlying content in associated online forums.
National Geographic Television will develop a television series (tentatively titled "Aqua Kids") and transmedia program to introduce preschoolers and kindergarteners to the wonders and value of water. The goal is to empower young children's innate sense of inquiry and increase early environmental literacy by motivating young learners to make discoveries with water, inside and outside their homes. The grant would allow the National Geographic project team to: 1) research cutting-edge practices for teaching early learners environmental literacy and water principles; 2) convene content and creative advisors; 3) test one storybook and animatic (animated storyboard) with the target audience and their parents; 4) strategize best ways to create a transmedia project that capitalizes on emerging digital platforms, reaches audiences most in need, and takes advantage of National Geographic resources, including National Geographic's ongoing global water conservation outreach missions. Insight Research Group will conduct formative evaluation using the animatic and interviews with parents to help identify barriers to extend the television experience with their children to outdoor activities and beyond. The project partners include Project WET, a youth water education project, NOAA's Office of Marine Sanctuaries, USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service as well as a number of museums and Think It Ink It Publishing. This Pathways Project will allow the project team to complete the groundwork necessary to create an innovative new multiplatform educational media resource. The Water Show will inspire outdoor science play, build inquiry and social skills and create a vital foundation for caring and respecting the most valuable natural resource, water. Fostering early appreciation for how Earth's "green parts" are wholly dependent on its "blue parts" is foundational for subsequent scientific learning and instrumental in building lasting respect for living systems and natural resources.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Tara SorensenMichelle SullivanTierney ThysSara Zeglin
Sea Studios Foundation will extend the Strange Days on Planet Earth multimedia initiative to raise public science literacy on pressing environmental issues. Based on pioneering Earth System Science research, Phase Two will be a media and outreach project focused on the ocean and water issues. The goal of the project is to increase public awareness and understanding of the scope and scale of key issues affecting the ocean. At the core of the project is a four part television documentary series for PBS primetime entitled Strange Days, Ocean. The programs will concentrate on four content areas: overexploitation of ocean resources, pollution, coastal development, climate change and the role of the ocean in Earth's system. Each episode is structured around a compelling scientific questions designed to engage the audience in a search for answers based on the most current research from the varied Earth System Science disciplines. The series focuses on explaining how scientists come to know what they know. The series will be complemented by activity-based learning supported by a national consortium of informal learning institutions, a citizen science program, training sessions for informal educators, and a project website. Collaborators include the National Geographic and three new major partners: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Program to expand citizen science programs around invasive species; Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), dedicated to organizing college campus educational events; The Ocean Project (TOP), a network of 600 organizations; plus the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and eight other informal science institutions. Knight Williams Research Communications, and Public Knowledge and Cultural Logic will assess the impact of the series. The project will contribute to the field of informal science education by providing widely applicable communication lessons on ocean and water issues and a model methodology for creating science education media that is credible, informative, and relevant. The results of two unique adult learning case studies will be shared with the field through presentations at national meetings and workshops, and posted online.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark ShelleyDavid EliscoTierney Thys
This Broad Implementation media project (building upon prior NSF award 0639001) will address science literacy among Latinos via mass media, increasing the amount of Spanish-language science content available in the U.S., increasing the representation of Latino scientists in mainstream media, and expanding the knowledge base about Latino's interest and engagement in science. The STEM content will be based on the research conducted by the Hispanic scientists being interviewed and therefore includes a wide range of topics including astronomy, biology, physics, earth sciences, and engineering. The criteria for selecting the Hispanic researchers and the content is based on the importance of the research, how it is immediately relevant to a Latino audience, and how it draws on the indigenous knowledge system or ethnic pride for U.S. Latinos. Project deliverables include 150 audio-video interviews with Hispanic scientists distributed on both commercial Hispanic radio and TV stations, as well as public broadcasting and online. In addition to the broadcasts, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter will be used to reach out and engage Hispanics. It is estimated that 300 Spanish-language radio stations will air the programs, resulting in 3 million radio impressions for each daily 60-second broadcast. Television broadcasts are estimated to result in another 2 million impressions per program. Project partners include the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS); V-Me, a national Hispanic educational channel; KLRN, the San Antonio, Texas public television station that will provide the national PBS distribution; and DaGama Web Studio that will develop and implement the social media marketing plan to attract and engage Latinos online. Comprehensive evaluations of project deliverables and impact will be conducted by Informal Learning Solutions (video-audio formative evaluations), and Knight-Williams Research (summative evaluation of project impact). The Summative Evaluation Plan will focus on the programs\' overall appeal, clarity, and effectiveness in meeting the two key audience objectives in the proposal: (1) increasing familiarity with and understanding of science concepts among U.S. Latinos, and (2) demonstrating engagement activities such as talking with friends/family about the presented topics, and/or seeking out additional information. It will furthermore assess the extent to which listeners and viewers find the Hispanic researchers featured in the programs to be effective communicators and the importance they assign to hearing from Hispanic researchers themselves. It will look at whether and how the programs are effective selecting topics with immediate relevance to listeners'/viewers' everyday lives. Finally, the evaluation will gather information about listeners'/viewers' demographic and background characteristics, including their country of origin, degree of fluency in Spanish, reasons for preferring Spanish media, number of generations in the U.S., reasons for tuning into the programming, efforts to recommend the programs to others, and the likelihood of continuing to listen to or view the programs in the future.
StarTalk Radio will develop a highly innovative new genre of science radio that bridges the intersection between popular culture and science education. Host of the show and project PI is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, renowned scientist, astrophysicist, popular science author and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The radio programs will combine comedy, references to pop culture, and public fascination with space science to reach an untapped audience for the informal science field--those who listen to commercial talk radio call-in shows. The STEM content will include astronomy, astrophysics, astrobiology, space exploration, earth system science, and associated technologies. Goals and intended outcomes of the project include increasing knowledge and interest of space science topics, and motivating audiences to pursue additional learning acitivities as the result of listening to the programs. This project builds on a previous SGER grant (#0852400) which produced 13 pilot programs and was evaluated by Multimedia Research. Project deliverables include 39 one-hour live call-in shows a year for a total of 117 shows over three years, a website, and a business strategy that projects making the radio programs self-sustaining. Dr. Tyson will be the host, and each program will include a celebrity guest who has a strong interest in science. The target audience for the show is the "blue collar intellectual" audience segment who listens to commercial talk radio, has a high school education or less and is in the 25-44 year old range. It is estimated that there will be one million listeners per week by the end of the project. People with disabilities (deaf and visually impaired) will have access to the products through captioning and other features on the website. Project partners include CBS Radio, CBS/AOL, and Discover Magazine. Formative evaluation of these new shows and website will be conducted by Multimedia Research. The Goodman Research Group (GRG) will conduct the summative evluation to assess the extent to which the project accomplishes the goals and specifically will gather and analyze data on the previously untappped and underserved audiences. The evaluation will examine the differences in impact on Science Novices and Science Enthusiasts, asking questions about how the programs increase awareness of scientific issues, and their effects on society and culture, as well as factual knowledge. Methods include multi-level, quasi-experimental, and longitudinal episode assessments. Potential impacts on the field of informal science education include opening up a new commercial radio audience for informal science learning, increasing knowledge about effective approaches to combining humor and science, and demonstrating an effective business model that results in a self-supporting show about science on commercial radio.
Tornado Alley is a large-format 2D/3D film and comprehensive outreach program exploring the science behind severe weather events. The project focuses on cutting-edge developments in the fields of meteorology and earth science, demonstrating weather monitoring technologies. The project spotlights the current research of the VORTEX 2 (V2) project--the most ambitious effort ever to understand the origins, structure and evolution of tornadoes. The principle target audiences are science museum audiences, with additional special attention to under-served, rural mid-western communities, which will be served by digital 3D screenings. The film will be produced by Graphic Films and Giant Screen Films and distributed by Giant Screen Films. The Franklin Institute will create and manage outreach to professional audiences. Informal Learning Solutions will conduct formative evaluation; RMC Research Corporation will conduct summative evaluation of the project. The film, produced by Paul Novros (PI) and directed by Sean Casey, will collaborate closely with the V2 team, led by Dr. Josh Wurman, and consult with the project advisors to assure clarity and accuracy of the science being presented. A distance-learning initiative to serve educators--both formal and informal--will be managed by Karen Elinich (co-PI) of The Franklin Institute. The project's innovative outreach strategies leverage the mobility of the tornado intercept vehicle (TIV) built by Sean Casey, and the Doppler on Wheels and MGAUS (weather balloon vehicles) to bring scientists and weather-monitoring technology into direct contact with audiences. Outreach to underserved audiences, especially rural audiences, will provide opportunities for interactions with V2 PIs and their students, who serve as role models in science careers. In addition, cyber infrastructure will allow groups of educators to interact remotely with V2 researchers and experience visualizations of weather data. The film and ancillary materials will be translated into Spanish. The project serves as a model for the dissemination of the methods and results of a specific major NSF hard-science research endeavor to the general public through ISE products and activities. The goal of the project is for the audience to increase their knowledge and understanding of the scientific process, learn what meteorologists do, what technologies are used in meteorology and weather science and the factors and forces in meteorological events. It is intended that young audience members will also develop and interest in weather science and potential careers in science and engineering. In the first five years of the film\'s release, the audience is anticipated at 7 million plus. In addition, the live outreach events are expected to engage approximately 40,000-60,000 individuals.
The ScienceMakers: African Americans and Scientific Innovation is a three-year project designed to increase awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, raise awareness of STEM careers, and increase understanding of STEM concepts through the creation of education, media, and career resources. The project team is supplemented with an extensive advisory board of STEM education, museum, and community professionals, as well as representatives from partnering science centers. Project partners include the St. Louis Science Center, Liberty Science Center, New York Hall of Science, Pacific Science Center, Franklin Institute, COSI Columbus, Lawrence Hall of Science, SciWorks, Detroit Science Center, and MOSI Chicago. Additional collaborators include middle and high schools with high minority populations. Project deliverables include a fully accessible multi-media archive of video oral histories of 180 African American scientists and web resources and contests utilizing Web 2.0 and 3.0 applications such as social networking tools that foster engagement and build community around the ScienceMakers. Public programs for youth and adults at science museums, after-school programs, and community organizations highlight African American contributors, and encourage interest in science and science careers and the ScienceMakers DVD Toolkit expand the reach of this innovative project. Intended impacts for youth and adults consist of increased awareness of STEM concepts and career options, exposure to African American scientists, awareness of the contributions of minority scientists, and 21st century skills. Intended impacts on professional audiences include increased awareness and understanding of STEM careers and workforce diversity, 21st century skills, and STEM career options. The project evaluation, conducted by Knight-Williams Research Communications, utilizes a mixed-methods approach. The evaluation assesses the impact of the oral history archive, public programs, and other deliverables on public and professional audiences' knowledge, interest, and awareness of the contributions of African American scientists, STEM concepts, and STEM careers. The evaluation also includes an ethnography which examines factors that contribute to success in STEM careers by African-American scientists. The ScienceMakers significantly expands the world\'s largest searchable oral history archive and may have an enduring impact on research and practice in the field of informal science education. The project has the potential to enrich programs and exhibits, while raising awareness of the contributions of African-American scientists among informal science education professionals and the general public.
In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, The Franklin Institute Science Museum will develop, test, and pilot an exportable and replicable cyberlearning exhibit using two cutting edge technologies: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The exhibit's conceptualization is anchored in the learning research vision of the NSF-funded workshop Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future (Computing Research Association, 2005). The incorporation of VR and AR technologies into the Franklin Institute's electricity and Earth science exhibits is an innovation of traditional approaches to hands-on learning and will improve the quality of the learning experience for the primary audience of families with children and elementary school groups. The project has implications for future exhibit development and more broadly, will provide new research on learning on how to incorporate cyberlearning efforts into traditional exhibits. Fifteen participating exhibit developers across the ISE field will assist in the evaluation of the new exhibit; receive training on the design and development of VR and AR exhibits for their institutions; and receive full access to the exhibit's new software for implementation at their informal learning sites. The technology applications will be developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center--leaders in the field in Virtual Reality design and development. Front-end and formative evaluation will be overseen internally by the Franklin Institute. The Institute for Learning Innovation will conduct the summative evaluation. Research will be conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education on the effects of AR and VR technologies on exhibit learning.
The Science Museum of Minnesota, in collaboration with six NSF-funded Science and Technology Centers (STCs) around the country, is developing several deliverables around the theme of the Anthropocene; that is, the idea that Earth has entered a new geologic epoch in which humanity is the dominant agent of global change. Deliverables include: (1) a 3,500 square-foot exhibit with object theater at the museum; (2) an Earth Buzz Web site that focuses on global change topics equivalent in design intent to the museum's popular current science Science Buzz website; (3) kiosks with Earth Buzz experiences installed in selected public venues; (4) Public programs with decision makers and opinion leaders on the implications of a human-dominated planet; and (5) youth programs and activities that engage them with the exhibit, web site, and careers in STEM. The exhibits and Web site will feature scientific visualizations and computational models adapted to public learning environments from research work being conducted by STCs and other academic research partners. First-person narrative videos of scientists and their research produced by Twin Cities Public Television now are on display in the Future Earth exhibit and also have been packaged into a half-hour program for broadcast statewide. The intended strategic impact on the field of informal STEM education is twofold: (1) explore how to accelerate the dissemination of scientific research to public audiences; (2) investigate ways science centers/museums can serve as forums for public policy dialogues.
Investigators from the MIT Media Lab will develop and study a new generation of the Scratch programming platform, designed to help young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively -- essential skills for success in the 21st century. With Scratch, young people (ages 8 and up) can program their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations, then share their creations with others online. Young people around the world have already shared more than 1 million projects on the Scratch community website (http://scratch.mit.edu). The new generation, called Scratch 2.0, will be fully integrated into the Internet, so that young people can more seamlessly share and collaborate on projects, access online data, and program interactions with social media. The research is divided into two strands: (1) Technological infrastructure for creative collaboration. With Scratch 2.0, people will be able to design and program new types of web-based interactions and services. For example, they will be able to program interactions with social-media websites (such as Facebook), create visualizations with online data, and program their own collaborative applications. (2) Design experiments for creative collaboration. As the team develops Scratch 2.0, they will run online experiments to study how their design decisions influence the ways in which people collaborate on creative projects, as well as their attitudes towards collaboration. This work builds on a previous NSF grant (ITR-0325828) that supported the development of Scratch. Since its public launch in 2007, Scratch has become a vibrant online community, in which young people program and share interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations - and, in the process, learn important computational concepts and strategies for designing, problem solving, and collaborating. Each day, members of the Scratch community upload nearly 1500 new Scratch projects to the website - on average, a new project almost every minute. In developing Scratch 2.0, the team will focus on two questions from the NSF Program Solicitation: (1) Will the research lead to the development of new technologies to support human creativity? (2) Will the research lead to innovative educational approaches in computer science, science, or engineering that reward creativity? Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of the project is based on its study of how new technologies can foster creativity and collaboration. The investigators will conduct design experiments to examine how new features of Scratch 2.0 engage young people in new forms of creative expression, collaboration, learning, and metadesign. Young people are already interacting with many cloud-based services (such as YouTube and Facebook). But Scratch 2.0 is fundamentally different in that it aims to engage people in programming their own projects and activities in the cloud. With Scratch 2.0, young people won?t just interact with the cloud, they will create in the cloud. The goal is to democratize the development of cloud-based activities, so that everyone can become an active contributor to the cloud, not just a consumer of cloud-based services. This development and study of Scratch 2.0 will lead to new insights into strategies for engaging young people in activities that cultivate collaboration and creativity. Broader Impacts: The broader impact of the project is based on its ability to broaden participation in programming and computer science. The current version of Scratch has already helped attract a broader diversity of students to computer science compared to other programming platforms. The investigators expect that the collaboration and social-media features of Scratch 2.0 will resonate with the interests of today's youth and further broaden participation. Integration of Scratch into the introductory computer science course at Harvard led to a sharp reduction in the number of students dropping the course, and an increase in the retention of female students. There have been similar results in pre-college courses. The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) calls Scratch a ?promising practice? for increasing gender diversity in IT.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickNatalie RuskJohn Maloney