Da Niao and Big Bird Look at the Sky — A Planning Grant

June 1st, 2002 - May 31st, 2003 | PROJECT

Sesame Workshop, in collaboration with the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum and the Beijing Planetarium, is planning a planetarium show and complementary materials for preschool-age children and their families, teachers and other caregivers. The planetarium show will be designed for use in the United States and China and will have the following goals: -- promoting positive attitudes among young children towards science; -- providing age-appropriate information about astronomy in an engaging, entertaining format; and -- fostering am understanding of one another among children in the two countries. During the planning phase, there will be three face-to-face meetings among the principals: at the Beijing Planetarium, at Sesame Workshop in New York, and at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The purpose of these meetings will be to determine: -- What is the appropriate educational content for the show and complementary materials and what does research with children say about it? -- How does this type of project best reach preschool audiences? -- Is there a need or opportunity for producing alternative language or dialect versions of either the English or Mandarin versions of the show and complementary materials? -- What issues or problems affect the design of the show and complementary materials? -- What are the implementation issues? Particular attention will be given to exploring how the project might include cross-cultural information in the show and complementary materials, and how the cross-over characters (Da Naio appearing in the English version; Big Bird in the Mandarin version) might be included in the design.

Project Website(s)

(no project website provided)

Team Members

Joel Schneider, Principal Investigator, Sesame Workshop

Funders

Funding Source: NSF
Funding Program: ISE/AISL
Award Number: 0223584
Funding Amount: 49999

Tags

Audience: Educators | Teachers | Families | Museum | ISE Professionals | Parents | Caregivers | Pre-K Children (0-5)
Discipline: Space science
Resource Type: Project Descriptions
Environment Type: Media and Technology | Planetarium and Science on a Sphere