The National Science Foundation has provided funding through NSF-ISE# 0946691 to support the DISCUSS Colloquium, a seed initiative to nurture a shared Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications (DIGSS) for STEM learning film production at a scale and quality that is sustainable in the informal science education (ISE) community. It is anticipated that when such specifications are adopted and published, equipment manufacturers and show producers will be better able to raise capital based on the scale of the network and their need for replacement equipment and new films. Researchers from ILI
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John FraserWhite Oak InstituteVictor YoccoSarah Gruber
The National Science Foundation provided funding through NSF-ISE# 0946691 to support the Digital Immersive Screen Colloquium for Unified Standards and Specifications (DISCUSS), a seed initiative to nurture a shared Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications (DIGSS) for STEM learning film production at a scale and quality that is sustainable in the informal science education (ISE) community. The DISCUSS initiative engaged technical experts from across the GS community in concert with the Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) and developed a first draft specification that was presented to
The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) conducted a study to examine the impact of an information campaign presented at the 2010 Giant-Screen Cinema Association Annual Conference and Trade Show in Chattanooga, TN. The purpose of the study was to determine if changes in Conference attendees' awareness and attitudes towards the Digital Immersive Giant-Screen Specifications (DIGSS) could be attributed to the information campaign. Data were collected using an online questionnaire containing 11 "post/retrospective-pre"" items exploring the level of knowledge and attitude Conference attendees
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John FraserWhite Oak InstituteVictor Yocco
This report presents an evaluation study of Soundprint Media's project, Out of This World (#0741737), which was funded by the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education Program. The mission of the project was to introduce adult radio listeners and youth participants in museum events to the historical context and challenges faced by African-Americans and women who were involved as professionals in the United States' space program in the 1960's. The project website, capecosmos.com, included an interactive menu of activities set within the context of a NASA mission control center
WGBH and the Materials Research Society (MRS) collaborated to create Making Stuff, a multi-faceted project about the all-encompassing role that materials play in shaping our lives. The project included a four-episode NOVA mini-series originally broadcast in January, 2011 that was hosted by NY Times columnist David Pogue, a large-scale national outreach campaign with collaborating partnerships funded in 20 locations, web pages on the NOVA website, and an online contest promoted and hosted on Facebook. Across all project components, the overarching goals were to enhance the general public's
Summary of Findings Summative Evaluation Cielo y Tierra Noticias del Mundo Robert L. Russell, Ph.D. Learning Experience Design October 2011 Learning Experience Design conducted summative evaluation of the project entitled: Cielo y Tierra Noticias del Mundo (Sky & Earth News of the World). A series of three evaluation sessions were conducted with radio listeners to look at the impacts of the programs on their interest in the topics presented, their understanding of the content presented, and their motivation to take further action. The first two studies used focus group sessions. The third and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert RussellEarthSky Communications, Inc.Malu Jimenez
One World, One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure (OWOS) is a bi-national, China-US cooperative project to produce and distribute a planetarium show based on popular characters from Sesame Workshop's television productions in each country for preschool- and kindergarten-aged children, as well as accompanying outreach materials for children, parents and teachers to further enhance learning. The project aims to: (1) provide young Chinese and American children aged four to six with an age-appropriate introduction to astronomy; (2) promote positive attitudes toward science among young children in both
Premiering on PBS in January 2011, Design Squad Nation (DSN) is a 10-part series of TV shows and video blogs that build on the success of the award-winning PBS reality competition series Design Squad to get kids excited about engineering. Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) was hired to conduct an evaluation of DSN in 2011. The evaluation was designed to measure WGBH's success in achieving the following impacts on students and teachers: After using the DSN resources Middle school students will increase their knowledge of science and engineering concepts and the design process. Middle school
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) received a NOAA-ELG grant for a three-year project, entitled Exploring Earth Systems: Expanding Data Visualizations Experiences for Museum Learners (or Data Visualizations). The project focuses on the development, testing, and distribution of Visualizations for the Earth and Bio content strands of the AMNH's Science Bulletins program. The Visualizations are short media pieces that use satellite data to tell the story of Earth processes on land, in the oceans, and in the atmosphere, with the larger goals of helping viewers to understand the dynamic
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan FoutzAmerican Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) received a NOAA-ELG grant for a three-year project, entitled Exploring Earth Systems: Expanding Data Visualizations Experiences for Museum Learners (or Data Visualizations). The project focuses on the development, testing, and distribution of Visualizations for the Earth and Bio content strands of the AMNH's Science Bulletins program. The Visualizations are short media pieces that use satellite data to tell the story of Earth processes on land, in the oceans, and in the atmosphere, with the larger goals of helping viewers to understand the dynamic
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan FoutzAmerican Museum of Natural History
Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) conducted a summative national field test study of the PEEP Explorer's Guide in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms. Participating teachers used four-to-six Explorer's Guide Units with their students over the course of one school year. GRG assessed changes in teachers' science-teaching practices after using the PEEP Explorer's Guide over an extended period of time and examined potential barriers to using the PEEP Explorer's Guide throughout the course of a school year. The evaluation sought to measure the following professional audience impacts and
Funded by the National Science Foundation, Cyberchase: The Next Frontier is a web redesign intended to broaden Cyberchase's audience and engage kids more deeply with the math concepts. Multimedia Research, an independent evaluation group, assessed an early version of the revised website with rising 4th graders, focusing on: Appeal of screens and features User friendliness of screens and site components Transparency of icons, titles and site structure Cyberchase is the Emmy Award-winning mathematics series and website on PBS KIDS GO! using broadcast, web, new media and educational outreach to