scholarly journals Earth Science Education #6. Lessons Learned: Organizing a Geoscience Outreach Program at the University of Saskatchewan

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Onstad
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
The Earth ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University ◽  
Academic Year

Geology Outreach at the University of Saskatchewan was initiated during the 2018/19 academic year as a free and informal education opportunity for K–12 educators and their students in Saskatchewan. The program was 100% volunteer-run by undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan. We estimate reaching more than 1000 students in Saskatoon and surrounding areas following two years of outreach offerings. Hands-on activities offered included ‘Rocks and Minerals’, ‘Fossils’, ‘Meteorite Impacts’ and ‘Volcanoes’ and also involved a tour of the Museum of Natural Sciences when completed on campus. The overall intent of these activities was to foster excitement about the Earth Sciences. Typically, Educators who booked our program taught grades 4–7, where the Earth Sciences are strongly represented in Saskatchewan’s science curriculum. Most outreach offerings occurred on the University of Saskatchewan campus, but some were offered remotely at elementary schools and various Girl Guides of Canada events. During the 2019/20 academic year, we booked every outreach event planned for that year within two days and had a waiting list of more than 30 teachers across the province. The demand for geoscience outreach in Saskatchewan is high, and we hope to continue providing engaging, relevant, and fun educational outreach opportunities. University departments across Canada should allocate funds for community and school outreach initiatives and hire science communicators to oversee programs such as this.

Bugscope: Online K–12 Microscopy Outreach

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Robinson ◽  
Chas Conway ◽  
Cate Wallace ◽  
Ann M. Ray ◽  
Umesh Thakkar
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscope ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscope ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Concept Design ◽  
Broadband Internet ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Scanning Electron

Bugscope is a free online microscopy outreach program that offers K–12 classrooms anywhere in the world the ability to remotely operate a high-resolution scanning electron microscope, collect images of insects and other similar arthropods, and chat simultaneously with a team of scientists. It was conceived and implemented in the late 1990s when K–12 schools were beginning to gain broadband Internet access, many as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. One of several projects that took advantage of this opportunity to use the Internet to bring the laboratory into the classroom, Bugscope began as an NSF grant to purchase a field-emission scanning electron microscope and develop sophisticated client and server software to control it via a standard web browser. Inspired by the success of and lessons learned from the Chickscope remote magnetic resonance imaging project and from having successfully established remote web-based control of a transmission electron microscope, Clint Potter and Bridget Carragher created the Bugscope project with the goal of developing a remote microscopy educational outreach project that would be sustainable over the long term. This goal led to two significant design decisions. First, the software involved in setting up and running the live outreach sessions was purpose-built to ensure that only one staff member, if necessary, would be required at the instrument (as opposed to Chickscope, which required staff at the remote location as well as at the instrument). Second, students from a local high school would be employed as a renewable resource to help with pre-session sample preparation and to participate in live chat, answering questions from the remote classrooms. Although we now operate with permanent staff at the instrument, these efficiencies in the original concept/design have allowed Bugscope to operate continuously since March 1999, long after the original funding was exhausted.

scholarly journals NetSciEd: Network Science and Education for the Interconnected World

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroki Sayama ◽  
Catherine Cramer ◽  
Lori Sheetz ◽  
Stephen Uzzo
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
School Students ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Symposium Series ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
K 12

This short article presents a summary of the NetSciEd (Network Science and Education) initiative that aims to address the need for curricula, resources, accessible materials, and tools for introducing K-12 students and the general public to the concept of networks, a crucial framework in understanding complexity. NetSciEd activities include (1) the NetSci High educational outreach program (since 2010), which connects high school students and their teachers with regional university research labs and provides them with the opportunity to work on network science research projects; (2) the NetSciEd symposium series (since 2012), which brings network science researchers and educators together to discuss how network science can help and be integrated into formal and informal education; and (3) the Network Literacy: Essential Concepts and Core Ideas booklet (since 2014), which was created collaboratively and subsequently translated into 18 languages by an extensive group of network science researchers and educators worldwide.

Bugscope: A Practical Approach to Providing Remote Microscopy for Science Education Outreach

2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clinton S. Potter ◽  
Bridget Carragher ◽  
Liana Carroll ◽  
Charles Conway ◽  
Benjamin Grosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
High Magnification ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Education Outreach

AbstractThe Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for kindergarten to grade 12 (K–12) classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image insects at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a Web browser. Bugscope provides a state-of-the-art microscope resource for teachers that can be readily integrated into classroom activities. The Bugscope project provides a low-cost, sustainable model for research groups to support K–12 education outreach projects.

scholarly journals A Successful Educational Collaboration between Scientists and Educators: Microscopic Explorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Bergman ◽  
Caroline Schooley
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Collaboration ◽  
The University ◽  
Lawrence Hall Of Science ◽  
Development Center

The teacher's guide, Microscopic Explorations: A GEMS Festival Guide ( Brady and Willard, 1998 ), is the result of a partnership between Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS), a program of the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), the public science and curriculum development center of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Microscopy Society of America (MSA). Microscopic Exploration supports the MSA's low-cost national outreach program and, also, reaches a very large educational community as part of the GEMS series. Some of the lessons learned through the extremely successful MSA/LHS collaboration are summarized here in hopes that they may be instructive to other scientists and educators as they launch their own partnerships and collaborations.

Collaboration between the Exploratorium Museum (San Francisco) and the University of Chicago MRSEC in Educational Outreach Programs

2007 ◽  
Vol 1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Sheu ◽  
Heinrich Jaeger ◽  
Sidney Nagel ◽  
Barry Kluger-Bell ◽  
Shawn Lani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
School Science ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
After School ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Community Interactions ◽  
Science Clubs ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University

AbstractScience centers and museums have long been at the forefront of communicating the wonder of science to the general public and the K-12 school community. Interactions between the Exploratorium Museum (San Francisco, CA) and the University of Chicago MRSEC are described in this paper. The Exploratorium-organized NEO program—part of the NSF-sponsored NISE network—has greatly influenced the Univ. of Chicago's approach to its materials science course for teachers and helped them incorporate inquiry more deliberately into their after-school science clubs. Also, Exhibit Developers at the Exploratorium collaborate with scientists at the Univ. of Chicago to design exhibits that explain contemporary cutting-edge research in materials. These exhibits emphasize the wonder and beauty of common phenomena that one rarely stops to notice but which leads to deep scientific inquiry.

scholarly journals Bringing Microphysics to the Masses: The Blowing Snow Observations at the University of North Dakota: Education through Research (BLOWN-UNDER) Campaign

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Aaron Kennedy ◽  
Aaron Scott ◽  
Nicole Loeb ◽  
Alec Sczepanski ◽  
Kaela Lucke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
North Dakota ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Blowing Snow ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
University Of North Dakota ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University

AbstractHarsh winters and hazards such as blizzards are synonymous with the northern Great Plains of the United States. Studying these events is difficult; the juxtaposition of cold temperatures and high winds makes microphysical observations of both blowing and falling snow challenging. Historically, these observations have been provided by costly hydrometeor imagers that have been deployed for field campaigns or at select observation sites. This has slowed the development and validation of microphysics parameterizations and remote-sensing retrievals of various properties. If cheaper, more mobile instrumentation can be developed, this progress can be accelerated. Further, lowering price barriers can make deployment of instrumentation feasible for education and outreach purposes.The Blowing Snow Observations at the University of North Dakota: Education through Research (BLOWN-UNDER) Campaign took place during the winter of 2019-2020 to investigate strategies for obtaining microphysical measurements in the harsh North Dakota winter. Student led, the project blended education, outreach, and scientific objectives. While a variety of in-situ and remote-sensing instruments were deployed for the campaign, the most novel aspect of the project was the development and deployment of OSCRE, the Open Snowflake Camera for Research and Education. Images from this instrument were combined with winter weather educational modules to describe properties of snow to the public, K-12 students, and members of indigenous communities through a tribal outreach program. Along with an educational deployment of a Doppler on Wheels mobile radar, nearly 1000 individuals were reached during the project.

A 3D Printing Vending Machine and its Impact on the Democratization of 3D Printing on a College Campus

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjai Bashyam ◽  
Joshua Kuhn ◽  
Carolyn Conner Seepersad
Keyword(s):  
3D Printing ◽  
College Campus ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
3D Print ◽  
On Demand ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
Common User

The Innovation Station is a 3D printing vending machine that provides on-demand, internet-enabled 3D printing to all students on The University of Texas at Austin campus. It was designed and built by the authors, who also operate the machine throughout the academic year. This paper introduces the Innovation Station and describes insights and lessons learned from operating the machine for its first academic semester. User statistics and common user mistakes are described, and a designer’s guide is provided to make it easier for first-time users to 3D print successfully.

scholarly journals Virtual knowledge production within a physician educational outreach program

2011 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Physician Education ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Academic Detailing ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Web Conferencing ◽  
Face To Face

This paper describe the impacts and lessons learned of using conferencing technologies to support knowledge production activities within an academic detailing group. A three year case study was conducted in which 20 Canadian health professionals collaborated on developing educational outreach materials for family physicians. The groups communicated in face-to-face, teleconferencing, and web-conferencing environments. Data was collected over three years (2004-2007) and consisted of structured interviews, meeting transcripts, and observation notes. The analysis consisted of detailed reviews and comparisons of the data from the various sources. The results revealed several key findings on the on the impacts of conferencing technologies on knowledge production activities of academic detailers. The study found that: 1) The rigid communication structures of web-conferencing forced group members to introduce other tools for communication 2) Group discussions were perceived to be more conducive in face-to-face meetings and least conducive teleconferencing meetings; 3) Web-conferencing had an impact on information sharing; 4) Web-conferencing forces group interaction “within the text”. The study demonstrates the impacts and lessons learned of academic detailing groups collaborating at a distance to produce physician education materials. The results can be used as the bases for future research and as a practical guide for collaborative academic detailing groups working within a virtual collaborative and educational environment.

scholarly journals Participant Learning in an Archival Education and Outreach Program to Fraternities and Sororities: An Implementation of Evidence-Based Librarianship and Information Science

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Passoneau ◽  
Michele Christian
Keyword(s):  
Information Science ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
State University ◽  
Traditional Lecture ◽  
Archival Education ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
The University

What can researchers do when they want to transform a traditional lecture into a collaborative, hands-on learning experience? How can participants learn and become empowered to construct and maintain historical records that reflect their experiences? An archivist can lecture students about basic archival practices and the students can learn a few skills, but hands-on activities for record creation and maintenance that facilitate participants’ learning will create collaborators with basic, but important, archival skills.At Iowa State University (ISU), the University Archivist and the Assessment Librarian partnered to create an educational outreach program with Greek (fraternity and sorority) students and alumni.

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