I’m excited to announce that I will soon be taking on a newly created role at the Academy, the Senior Instructional Design Lead for Science Action Club. This is a new position working with our largest youth program, the Science Action Club (SAC), a high-impact STEM learning program that designs professional development and teaching kits for middle school afterschool …
Check out this neat article by Jessica Decker on iNaturalist, a mobile app that is empowering regular folks to make nature observations that help science. To date more than 1 million observations have been made using iNaturalist! One unanticipated benefit has been that the app has been creating communities of citizen scientists. According to Alison Young, science …
Last Friday, some folks from the education and visualization sections of the California Academy of Sciences got to play with some neat virtual reality prototypes at the offices of Swissnex San Francisco. Entitled "Real Virtuality," this interactive exhibit focused on three VR simulations created by the Geneva-based foundation Artanim. As someone who has been following …
As the culmination of a partnership with Khan Academy, internet provider Comcast is offering free broadband internet access for six months for qualifying households in Oakland, California. In addition, those that successfully apply by September 2 will receive a free laptop. This was the result of the participation of 73,000 of Bay Area youth from …
Although we've known about this for awhile, this is the most public statement from the MacArthur Foundation, indicating that they are stepping back from their digital learning support. The latest essay from Julia Stasch the president of MacArthur Foundation makes clear that they are ending their support for several key parts of their portfolio, including affordable …
I’m still so impressed with the new “Color of Life” exhibit at my museum, the California Academy of Sciences. “Color of Life” focuses on the many amazing ways that color communicates, conceals, and warns in the natural world. We have such talented exhibit and experience designers on staff, and it’s cool to see them unleash …
In just a couple of weeks, The Mix at the San Francisco Public Library is opening! The Mix is a youth-designed teen center open just for teens (ages 13-18) to hang out, explore technologies, work together, and learn from educators from around the Bay Area, including the California Academy of Sciences, the Bay Area Video …
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 …
The Hyperlapse app seems pretty cool. But the latest iOS already includes a timelapse function in the camera. So what’s the big deal? A lot, apparently, as you can see from comparing the two videos of the same subject that I shot with the iOS timelapse function and Hyperlapse, respectively. In this case, I chose to …
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 …