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Through Project BUILD, a STAR Library Network (STAR Net) program funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) offered the virtual Dream, Build, Create program which consisted of (1) the award-winning documentary Dream Big: Engineering Our World and (2) five live-streamed panels of diverse engineers (Dream Teams) who...

PEEP Family Science is designed for parents and their three- to five-year-old children, especially those from low-income families who are served by home visiting organizations. A media-based project featuring the preschool public television science program PEEP and the Big Wide World, it includes animated stories, live-action videos with real children, hands-on science activities, and educational resources designed to support parents...

Media can play a critical role in engaging children, parents, and educators in science. Listen in to WGBH’s Executive Producer for PEEP, Marisa Wolsky, and children’s app developer, Jillian Orr, as they talk about the new app, PEEP FAMILY SCIENCE, that can help parents confidently engage in science with their children. ...

The PEEP Family Science apps were designed specifically for low-income parents and their preschool children to explore science together at home. A major issue we confronted early on in the design and development  was how families would be able to access the PEEP media, which included videos from the award-winning children's show, PEEP and the Big Wide World. Many of the...

For at-risk children who cannot attend preschool, accessing science activities depends almost entirely on parents—but many parents have limited skills for supporting such learning. PBS station WGBH has recently launched a series of free family apps based on the Emmy Award-winning preschool science series, PEEP and the Big Wide World. The apps were developed to be used jointly by parent...

PBS has a long history of creating award-winning children’s media and has published a wide range of free educational apps. PBS stations often seek organizational partnerships for help in reaching families with the free digital resources they produce. One such collaboration is between WGBH and ALSC as we together introduce a new series of apps developed with National Science Foundation...

To engage parents and young children in exploring science together, media producers from WGBH (Boston’s public media station) and researchers from Education Development Center (EDC) collaborated with two home-visiting organizations—Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY USA) and AVANCE—to design and test PEEP Family Science, an app-based intervention with science-focused digital media resources and associated supports for diverse, low-income...

Engaging in science from a young age can provide children with a foundation for school readiness and future academic achievement. Recent research suggests that parents feel responsible for helping their children learn, but only about half of parents—and even fewer low-income parents—feel confident helping their children learn science. Even when parents value early STEM learning, providing enriching science experiences can...

NSTA Preschool Blog by Peggy Ashcroft features guest blog post authors, Michelle Cerrone, Gay Mohrbacher, and Megan Silander, who write about using digital media to support children’s interest in science topics, and discuss tips educators can use to support families using media to explore science with their preschool-age children, based on their research and development of the PEEP Family Science...

The pilot test for Changemakers: Advancing Community Science Literacy was a capacity building program integrating strategic discourse & community change theory that identified a new path for advancing community STEM literacies. The results of experiment established partnerships with locally based non-profits, and a collaborative effort to address environmental justice and social disparities in areas threatened by climate change. The evaluation was underaken with...

The pilot test of a capacity building program integrating strategic discourse & community change theory identified a new path for advancing community STEM literacies. The results of experiment established partnerships with locally based non-profits working to address environmental justice and social disparities in areas threatened by climate change identified five recommendations to reset the role of ISLC’s as more relevant...

A growing body of research points to the importance of engaging children in science from an early age, for both their future trajectories in science careers and school readiness. For some children, preschool provides the chance to engage in meaningful science learning. But, for the 46% of American 3- and 4-year-olds who do not attend preschool, opportunities for science enrichment...

This summary report gives an overview of the Bringing Science Home with PEEP project research and key findings. ...

PEEP Family Science is a collaboration among the WGBH Education and Children’s Media teams, Education Development Center (EDC) researchers and staff, and parents participating in programs with two home visiting organizations: AVANCE in Texas and HIPPY in Arkansas. The project aims to foster joint media engagement and hands-on science exploration among diverse, low-income 3- to 5-year-old children and their parents...

The Practitioners and Researchers Investigating Sensorimotor Movement (PRISM) Toolkit provides a suite of observation tools for identifying and categorizing gestures, movement, and speech for interactive museum exhibits (espeically those that involve full-body interactions). The tools can be used live in some settings when appropriate, but also can be used on video recordings of exhibit interactions. ...

This is the summative evaluation report from the Move2Learn Project, a collaboration between researchers and museum practitioners in the US and UK to study embodied learning in the context of early childhood informal learning. This summative report covers the effectiveness of the collaboration and documents best practices for large interdisicplinary teams. ...

This Masters project consists of two elements: 1) an integrated after-school program to improve student English language reading and academic outcomes for third graders' vocabulary development by incorporating music, artistic creativity and linguistics; 2) a pilot sample curriculum that demonstrates the approach for building student comprehension through musical theater and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content experiences. Called "Water...

Pull up a chair to learn about Middle Ground, a facilitated exhibition project that stands at the intersection of social science, social justice, place-making and research on informal learning. We’ll describe the exhibition’s content of bias and stereotyping, facilitation by formerly incarcerated community members, and research results on the impact of facilitation. Presentation made by Hsin-Yi Chien, Robert Dixon, Josh Gutwill...

The Science Museum of Minnesota will create a 450-square-foot version of its award-winning "RACE: Are We So Different?" exhibition for distribution to rural areas and communities in Minnesota, and adjacent regions in Iowa, eastern North and South Dakota, and northern Wisconsin. The museum will produce four replicas of the exhibition for museums and partner organizations, and collaborate with community groups...

This book is a deliverable (requisite) of an NSF (National Science Foundation) grant to share the project outcomes and what we learned from the NSF grant project. This four-year NSF project was funded to provide professional development to museum educators about Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science in museums, with the goal of providing a culturally relevant way for Indigenous communities...

The Expanding the Reach: Creating Capacity for Understanding RACE project  developed site-specific programming to complement the installation of three small footprint exhibitions of RACE: Are We So Different? in three communities in Minnesota. The goal of the project was to prompt community conversations around topics of race, racism, equity, and the nation’s history, as well as local histories concerning race....

As professionals, we often assume that the engaging experiences visitors have in our exhibits and programs will lead to long-term learning. But how do we know this is happening, and, moreover, how do we design exhibits, programs and interactions to maximize visitors’ ability to learn from their experiences?  At Chicago Children’s Museum a long- standing research collaboration with Northwestern University...

PLUM LANDING a digital media PBS Kids series that is designed to motivate six- to nine-year-old children to investigate the natural world. Content developers from WGBH Boston and researchers from the Education Development Center (EDC) used an iterative research and design process to create the Plum Landing Explore Outdoors Toolkit. The Toolkit includes digital media resources (animated stories, live-action videos, an...

PLUM LANDING a digital media PBS Kids series that is designed to motivate six- to nine-year-old children to investigate the natural world. Content developers from WGBH Boston and researchers from the Education Development Center (EDC) used an iterative research and design process to create the Plum Landing Explore Outdoors Toolkit. The Toolkit includes digital media resources (animated stories, live-action videos,...

This report presents highlights from a Fall 2020 evaluation conducted with 69 STEAM teachers from across the U.S., all of whom are part of the National Air and Space Museum's Teacher Innovator Institute (TII).  Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on classrooms and the museum's teacher PD program, the evaluation in Fall 2020 focused on understanding the conditions, adaptations,...