SoundVision Productions is developing and distributing a series of ten, hour-long public radio documentaries that will explore the turbulent boundary between science and the humanities, capturing the present moment of tremendous scientific and scholarly ferment with the unique and intimate power of radio. By introducing the radio audience to the thoughts and voices of some of the world\'s most accomplished scientists, in conversations with the counterparts in the humanities, the series will look at recent developments in science including physics, molecular and cell biology, environmental science, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and the multiple disciplines of the life sciences reflecting the increasingly subtle and widespread application of evolutionary theory. In each program, a careful account of new scientific ideas and discoveries will be placed within the context of historical and contemporary thought about the human and natural worlds. Barinetta Scott, the Executive Producer, has most recently been the Executive Producer for the highly regarded NSF funded NPR series, "The DNA Files." In developing this project, she will work closely with an advisory committee that includes: John Avise, Research Professor, Dept. of Genetics, University of Georgia Samuel Barondes, Professor and Director of the University of California San Francisco\'s Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry Terrence Deacon, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Boston University Anne Foerst, Professor of Computer Science and Theology, St. Bonaventure University Ursula Goodenough, Dept. of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis William Irons, Professor of Anthropology, Northwestern University Gordon Kane, Professor of Physics, University of Michigan Jim Miller, Senior Program Associate for the AAAS Program of Dialogue Between Science and Religion W. Mark Richardson, Episcopal Priest, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, General Theological Seminary Holmes Rolston, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University Michael Ruse, Professor of the Philosophy of Biology and Ethics, at Florida State University Mary Evelyn Tucker, Professor of Religion at Bucknell University Dorothy Wertz, Senior Scientist; Social Science, Ethics, and the Law; The Shriver Center.
Flip It, Fold It, Figure It Out! is a 1500-sq. foot traveling mathematics exhibition with companion take-home educational materials. There are two copies of the traveling exhibit: one for the members of the North Carolina Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative reaching over 500,000 visitors, and a second for travel nationally to science centers reaching an estimated 750,000 additional visitors. Take-home activity kits were developed for visitors to continue informal mathematics explorations at home. The activities included expand and extend the exhibit themes, offering multiple levels to meet the needs of K-5 students and their families.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Deborah May
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC is planning and coordinating a visit by Chinese delegates to designated United States Science Museums toward identifying cooperative endeavors related to public understanding of science. Planning also will be done for a separate delegation of informal educators from Japan. Discovery Place will work with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to assist in planning and arranging portions of each delegation's visit in order to help science center professionals from all three countries meet and learn more about each other's institutions, programs and priorities. Through this networking, U.S. institutions will be encouraged to participate in exchanges and cooperative projects. The meetings also will help all sides identify potential partners and develop the relationships necessary to pursue joint activities such as staff exchanges, cooperative development of exhibits and programs and design of workshops. Specific planning activities to be undertaken by Discovery Place include: Identifying appropriate museum and media production sites for the Chinese delegation to visit; Coordinating the purposes of the visit with these sites; Working with The Institute of Pacific Asia (IPA is the NSF grantee that is handling the administrative aspects of the Chinese and Japanese visits) to develop a specific agenda for each site visit; Coordinating with ASTC to arrange such activities as: Presentations by members of the Chinese and Japanese delegation in ASTC conference sessions, Participation by members of the Chinese and Japanese delegations in ASTC conference events and sessions, and Assisting IPA in developing an agenda for a one-day US/China delegation meeting immediately following the conference. This project provides rare opportunities for informal science educators and policy makers to explore a wide range of program options for the United States, China and Japan to inform the public and build support for science.
The Minnesota Children's Museum, in collaboration with the American Library Association will develop a project to engage children ages two through seven years old and their parents in exploring mathematics through hands-on, book-based math activities in libraries and children's museums across the country. The main elements of the project are: 1. A 1200 square foot exhibit at the Minnesota Children's Museum; 2. A traveling exhibit to ten children's museums over a six month period; 3. Five smaller versions of the exhibit will travel to 75 libraries sponsored by the American Library Association. Each library that apply for the exhibit must present a plan in which 50 percent of their exhibit audience will be children and families of the under-represented, lower income groups, and racial and/or ethnic groups. 4. Programs and materials will be designed to provide parents with the means to actively participate in their children's math education. The collaboration of the Minnesota Children's Museum and the American Library Association draws together two organizations whose natural constituencies are parents with young children. Project 1,2,3 is designed to be national in scope and creates multiple formats within which families can enjoy exploring math. Its goals and objectives reflect four messages: start early, math is everywhere, parental involvement and get into books. The project Principal Investigator (PI) Ms. Jeanne W. Vergeront received her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Science in Child and Family Studies and Environmental Design, respectively from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Currently, she serves as the Vice President, Educational Projects at the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In several primarily Hispanic, low socio-economic school districts of the southwest in partnership with local institutions of higher learning, this 48-month project will develop programs and materials to attract parents of children of all grade levels and make them active supporters of a system that promotes good mathematical learning for their children. These programs and materials will help them become aware of what is happening in their children's classroom; offer them occasions to take on leadership roles in working with teachers, administrators, and other parents; and provide them opportunities for in-depth experiences with school mathematics. The materials will be initially developed and piloted in the Sunnyside School District. After revision from the pilot project, the project will be implemented in several other school districts.
Explore Evolution is a three-year project that uses a combination of traveling exhibits and activity kits to introduce the concept of evolution to museum audiences and 4-H groups. Six museum partners will collaborate on the development of eleven interactive exhibit modules on the following topics: disease in humans, eye development in animals, fruit fly diversity, sexual selection, hominoid development and extinction. The museum consortium includes the Kansas Museum and Biodiversity Center, Museum of the Rockies (MT), Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Science Museum of Minnesota, University of Nebraska State Museum and the Exhibits Museum of the University of Michigan. The inquiry-based activity kits will be modeled after the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's "Wonderwise" kits, funded in part by NSF, and designed for middle school audiences. An "Explore Evolution" website will be launched to support the exhibits and activity kits. Dissemination will occur through museum education programs as well as a consortium of 4-H programs in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Michigan, Nebraska and Wyoming. It is anticipated that more than 1.8 million museum visitors and 800,000 4-H members will participate in this project.
Math in the Garden is a collaborative project between the University of California's Botanic Garden and 17 organizations around the nation that work with underserved urban youth, as well as rural communities. The project will create a series of five (5) guidebooks with activities that bring adults and children together in the garden to learn the mathematics inherent in the nature of gardening. The materials and activities will teach mathematical concepts and skills, feature plants, flowers, and fruits as math manipulatives, promote active learning, and support NCTM and National Science Standards. The guides will organize activities into clusters for various times of the year and contain appropriate activities for elementary through middle school-aged youth. Partner organizations will coordinate a trial test. Afterwards, the formative evaluation will guide the revision and finally, national distribution of the guides will be in conjunction with Dale Seymour Publishers. A national Advisory Committee of mathematicians, botanists, science educators, math educators, botanical garden staff, and leaders working in community gardens has been established. The entire project will be evaluated at every stage of development for its ability to increase math skills, garden knowledge, and to encourage young people to engage in active, inquiry learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katharine Barrett
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) is a five-year collaborative effort between the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and King's College London. The purpose of the Center is to study the intersection of informal science learning that takes place in museums and science centers and formal learning that takes place in schools, and to prepare leaders in informal science education. Through the efforts of the center, new doctoral level leaders will be prepared who understand how informal science learning takes place and how informal institutions can contribute to science education reform. A Ph.D. program will be offered to 16 individuals at King's College London (two cohorts of eight) and a post-doctoral program to six scientists interested in issues of learning and teaching in informal settings. A doctoral program is planned at the University of California at Santa Cruz for 24 students, 12 whose interests are primarily in education and 12 who come from the sciences. In addition to doctoral level training, there will be a certification program for existing informal science professionals to better enable them to support teachers, students and the general public. That program will provide 160 informal science educators 120 hours of professional development experiences, and an additional 24 informal science educators with a master's degree in informal science education at UC Santa Cruz. A Bay Area Institute will be developed to serve as a central focus for all CILS activities. It will bring together researchers and practitioners; it will offer courses and workshops for graduate students; and it will provide a central location for reporting research findings and methodologies that focus on how informal learning institutions can best contribute to science education reform.
KCTS, Seattle's PBS affiliate, is producing a series of three one-hour prime-time science education television specials starring Bill Nye. The specials will be aimed at a family audience and will be designed to promote informal science learning through an entertaining presentation of science in everyday life. Topics currently being considered for the specials are The Science of Sports, The Science of Learning, and The Science of the Future, thought other topics, such as Pseudo Science, also are being considered. Each program will maintain the entertainment values of enthusiasm for science so prominent in the Bill Nye the Science Guy series but will have a strong narrative element and air of suspense as Bill embarks on a journey of discovery, greater depth of content and presentation, and longer uninterrupted segments. The programs will be supported by a multi-pronged outreach program to reach parents and children through local PBS stations and science museums, community organizations serving disadvantaged populations and, possibly, a tie-in with a national chain of quick family restaurants. Many of the same team that created Bill Nye the Science Guy will work on this project including Bill Nye; Elizabeth Brock, Executive Producer; and Erren Gottlieb and James McKenna, producers. The production team will work with fourteen scientists and science educators who will advise the project on presentation and outreach. This group also will review and comment on all scripts and drafts of outreach material.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
William NyeJames McKennaErren GottliebBurnill ClarkRandy Brinson
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science proposed to develop an outreach science and mathematics program with a parent involvement and teacher enhancement professional development component. The goals of the project are as follows: (1) to involve parents in their children's education; (2) to promote a positive attitude on behalf of parents and students toward science and mathematics; (3) to increase teachers' level of comfort in teaching science; and (4) to enhance teacher's confidence in the hands-on approach as an effective method for teaching science. The objectives for the parent component of this project are: acquaint parents with the national and state science education goals and standards; introduce parents to activities that can be done at home with children; and provide families with materials and activity sheets that can be used at home. The objectives for the teacher component of this project are: (1) to provide teachers with opportunities for increased communication with parents about science literacy for children; (2) provide professional development for teachers on the use of hands-on science activities in the classroom; and (3) to providing bilingual activity guides and kits containing materials to encourage science learning. The methods for implementing this project will be varied according to the needs of the target audiences. Parents and children will be engaged through parent workshops and multi-aged children's activities conducted at the museum by experienced science educators. The professional development for teachers' component of this project will include an extensive summer workshop, on-going training/ planning sessions during the school calendar year and session on the uses of the bilingual teaching manuals. The cost sharing for this NSF award is 46.7% of the total project cost.
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) will develop Window on Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Work in Progress. The project will include a 4,500 sq. ft. exhibit, a World Wide Web site, an exhibit cookbook for archaeology interactives developed for the exhibit, and a suite of related classroom activities. Catalhoyuk is currently the most important archaeological site in Turkey and among the most significant cultural heritage monuments in the world. It consists of two mounds located on either side of an ancient river channel. The larger mound has Early Neolithic age occupation levels (9000 and 7500 years ago) and represents one of the largest known Neolithic settlements, holding links to the beginnings of agriculture, animal domestication, and the rise of urban complexity. The smaller mound consists of more recent occupations (7500 to 5000 years ago). Together they may record nearly 10,000 years of human occupation. SMM has been a partner, along with the Turkish team, in the Catalhoyuk Research Project since its inception in 1993 and has the responsibility of developing public programs and for bringing the research findings before a worldwide audience. Unlike a traditional approach where the results of archaeological research appear years after the excavations, this project will focus on the process of archaeology giving visitors the opportunity of learning about the workings of contemporary archaeology and the nature of scientific inquiry, along with the important insight into the beginning of Mediterranean civilization. The exhibit will be updated annually for two years to reflect new results of ongoing fieldwork. The project addresses the National Science Education Standards, particularly those related to science as inquiry and to the history and nature of science.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Donald PohlmanNatalie RuskOrrin Shane
The Exploratorium will develop an exhibition entitled " Traits of Life: Exploratory Exhibits in the Life Sciences". There will be two versions. The first will be a 4,500 sq.-ft. exhibit that will include about 35 life science interactive modules and will be installed at the Exploratorium. Following an evaluation period, about 20 of the exhibits will be used for a 3,000 sq.-ft. traveling version of the exhibition. The Association of Science and Technology Centers will manage the circulation of the exhibition. Challenging visitors to consider the question "What is Life?" this exhibition will be designed to offer learners new ways to explore characteristics shared by all living things. Three traits have been selected to illustrate the characteristics common to all living things: a shared molecular and cellular structure, self-reproduction, and adaptation to surroundings. These traits will be reflected in three sections of the exhibit: "A Common Design", "Passing It On" and "Staying Alive". Complementary elements include artists-in-residence, scientists-in-residence, teacher institutes, student materials, web-based activities, public programs and publications. Project staff will attempt to develop an understanding of techniques that are most successful in stimulating learning about life science in informal settings.