Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation is producing three seasons of a regional television series that will enable audiences to explore, appreciate and learn about the relationship between science and everyday life in Northern New England. The project is being developed in collaboration with public television stations in Vermont and New Hampshire and will attract viewers by focusing on content and issues that are of unique interest to this area. It addresses the critical need to improve science literacy in this predominantly rural region of the country. Ancillary materials will be developed for use at home, in the community, and in classrooms and will consist of: Quest "Take-Home" Activity Pages, "In Your Community" Guides, Quest Community Events, and Classroom Lesson Plans and Suggested Activities.
The MIT Media Laboratory, in collaboration with six museums, will develop the "Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network," with the goal of engaging a broader audience in science inquiry and engineering by enabling more people to create, invent and explore with new digital technologies. PIE museums will integrate the latest MIT technologies and educational research into their ongoing public programs. The museums will organize MindFest events, modeled after a two-day event at MIT in 1999, at which youth, educators, artists, engineers, hobbyists and researchers came together to collaborate on invention projects. The PIE Network will disseminate PIE ideas and activities to educators and families nationally.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickNatalie RuskBakhtiar MikhakMike PetrichKaren Wilkinson
Plants Are Up To Something (aka Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education: Huntington Conservatory for Botanical Science) is a 16,000 square-foot exhibition full of spectacular plants and interactive exhibits. The Huntington Library will developed the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science to engage visitors of all ages in the study of plants. Conceived as a synthesis of a traditional conservatory and an interactive science center, the Conservatory will be a 16,000-square-foot permanent exhibition featuring spectacular plants in a family-oriented setting. Using a living collection of plants from around the world, visitors will explore the diversity of plants. Interactive exhibits will encourage visitors to make observations and comparisons of plant structures.
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) will develop "Cyborgs: A Natural History of Machines and Humans." The Project will result in a national traveling exhibit, a web site, and a complement of related educational programs focused on the boundaries between humans and their machines and on recent scientific efforts to understand the human body and mind. The 6,000-square-foot exhibit will open at the SMM before traveling to the six large museums in the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative (SMEC), and then will be available for lease by other museums.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Donald Pohlman
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Center for Education's Board on Science Education (BOSE) of the National Academies will plan and host a one-day planning meeting to examine the status of research on learning science within informal education settings. This planning meeting will help leaders in the field of informal learning think about the current state of research and evaluation and help them conceptualize a synthesis study on research in informal learning settings.
This project will produce "Jewels of the Jungle," an hour-long film for public audiences documenting the discovery of new species of endophytes and the isolation of their medicinal compounds. The film presents an exciting story of scientific discovery that takes the viewer around the world from Montana to Madagascar, in search of new species of plants important for medical research. Compounds isolated from endophytes have proven vital in the treatment of many diseases including cancer, AIDS, malaria, and drug-resistant bacterial and fungal infections. "Jewels of the Jungle" aims to enhance viewers' understanding of bio-chemical research and cultivate a better appreciation of scientific research in general.
Peep and the Big, Wide World is an NSF-funded television series for children ages 3 to 5. The Children's Museum proposes to build on this show and extend its impact through exhibits, education and professional development programs. Specifically, planning grant funds will be used to 1) gather best practices in preschool & brand-based exhibition development, 2) conduct a front-end survey of potential host museums to determine training needs of museum staff, parents, caregivers and teachers of preschool children, and 3) clarify design of the education and professional development programs associated with the exhibit.
The Science Museum of Minnesota will develop, test and disseminate "Handling Calculus: Math in Motion." At the heart of "Handling Calculus" is a set of model exhibits and accompanying programs designed to introduce museum visitors to calculus through interactive physical models that illustrate mathematical concepts both kinesthetically and conceptually. The project focuses on three central concepts: (1) how graphs show changes in rates; (2) how summing quantities over time (integration) can provide important information about results of a process; and (3) how the use of parametric functions can provide a simple way to describe a complex motion.
This Planning Grant will enable the Ohio State University to address the shortage of professional engineers in the United States by designing an engineering curriculum for dissemination through the 4-H system. Planning activities include the establishment of a nationwide advisory committee, solicitation of input from the target audience via focus groups and the development of a plan for the curriculum and its content, designed to address the needs of young women and underserved groups. Pilot testing of sample units will occur in Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana. A recruitment plan will also be developed to aide with national dissemination.
The Exploratorium will develop an exhibit focusing on three areas of mental activity that process perceptions and enable human action: attention, emotion and judgment. Developers will create 32 new interactive exhibits and rebuild six to eight old ones to be part of the museum's permanent collection. The Exploratorium will develop a new area in the museum dedicated to exploring the processes of the human mind and brain, experiment with new ways of creating meaningful mind experiences for visitors and help establish a sense of collective experimentation among science centers in neuroscience and psychology exhibits and programming.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael PearceRichard BrownKathleen McLean
The California Science Center (CSC) developed the "World of Ecology," a 45,000 sq ft permanent exhibition that involves the large-scale fusion of interactive science exhibits with the immersive live-habitat concept of zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens.The focus for this project is the Extreme Zone, which will explore how species adapt to their environment. It contains four habitats: the Sonoran desert, deep sea hydrothermal vents, polar regions and rocky shores and will include more than 259 terrestrial and aquatic animal and plant species. The overall goal is to communicate that in every ecosystem the physical and living worlds are connected and shaped by the same fundamental ecological principles. It will be achieved through the integration of science center exhibits with immersive habitats on a large scale. This approach provides an interesting model for the science center, museum, zoo and botanical garden fields. The target audience is the 1.6 million annual CSC visitors, 57% of whom are from minority populations, with an emphasis on families, elementary and middle school students. In addition, CSC will enhance the exhibition through outreach programs that serve at-risk students. All audio-visual programs will be available in Spanish as well as English, and a Spanish language audio guide will be produced. Collaboration with the Santa Barbara Zoo will bring valuable expertise as well as enhance prospects for dissemination.
Water Logging is a volunteer water quality monitoring program, that monitors water quality in the Huntington-Northport Bay Complex in Long Island, NY. The goals and objectives of the Water Logging Program are to: 1. Educate and involve the public in water quality assessment and protection. 2. Develop a sense of stewardship among the community in the Huntington-Northport Bay watershed. 3. Screen for water quality impairments and determine long-term water quality trends. 4. Document effects of water quality improvement programs. 5. Provide useful water quality data to interested parties and the public.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County