I had the opportunity to connect with Don Olavides, a Filipino researcher studying sea cucumbers. He was kind enough to show us how the scientists process specimens that are brought in from their dives, so that they can be further studied back in the lab. NOTE: Apologies for my terrible videography skills! It was …
Check out this short tour of the Cal Academy’s field laboratory in Puerto Galera, Philippines, guided by the Academy’s curator of invertebrate zoology Dr. Rich Mooi. This was shot fairly late in the evening to avoid the crush of scientists crowding the lab earlier in the afternoon. So there were not as many beautiful specimens on …
Just a quick reminder that I'm still in the Philippines for the next few days, as part of the 2015 Verde Island Passage expedition for the Cal Academy. You can read about all our adventures over here on our youth community tumbr: Academyadventures.tumblr.com! Lots of awesome stuff going on over here in PI!
As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve got a really neat makeshift lab that we’ve set up in the dining area of the Atlantis Beach Resort. I did a little walk through and spotted these cool specimens that were recently collected. Kelly Markello was working on this beautiful echinoderm. It appears to be leeching …
I'm excited to finally be able to share the news about a new podcast I will be co-producing called "Object Oriented: Digital Learning in Collections-based Museums." I am honored to be co-hosting the podcast along with my friends Barry Joseph, head of digital learning at the American Museum of Natural History, and Eve Gaus, head …
[crossposted from the "Academy Adventures" blog] Hi Folks! Rik Panganiban here, senior manager of Digital Learning at the Academy. I’m super excited to announce that, beginning on April 5, I will be participating in the 2015 Philippines Verde Island Passage (VIP) expedition, along with 40 or so other scientists and other experts from the Cal …
A few weeks ago, the Academy's Digitization Team scanned some tiny objects for myself and our TechTeens, using our awesome Gigamacro camera "Maggie." Of course, they have lots more work on their plate starting to produce high resolution images of our 45 million specimens and providing images for our upcoming "Color of Life" exhibit. Check …
In my previous post, I wrote about my initial thoughts on how augmented reality devices like Google Glass might be used for informal science education. In this post, I look at four use cases for Google Glass that I believe would make it (and similar augmented reality devices) a powerful tool for science learning. They …
A few weeks ago, I learned that the California Academy of Sciences had obtained a pair of Google Glass, Google’s early adopter attempt at creating augmented reality eyewear. Since I’ve done a lot of work and thinking in virtual and augmented reality before, I was pretty excited to get my hands on these glasses. My …
RIP, Terry. You’ll be missed, but your work lives on. From XKCD.