This past weekend at the California Academy of Sciences, nine teams of teens from across the Bay Area (including SF, Oakland, North Bay, and the peninsula) gathered to rapidly develop digital climate games on the topics of Bay Area food, water and energy for the 2nd annual Science Game Jam. The game jammers were ably …
Check out this Storify of a Tweetchat I participated in last Friday on the subject of Afterschool environmental education. It was a lot of fun to do and I learned a lot from the many awesome groups on the chat! [View the story "Celebrating #AfterschoolEE" on Storify]
I just read a chapter from the book Behavior Change Theories and Free-Choice Environmental Learning (2009) that examines behavior change theories as they apply to environmental learning and action. The author Nicole Ardoin of Stanford University reviews several relevant behavior change theories that are particularly relevant to institutions that offer "free-choice" environmental learning. That is, places …
Check out this super fun music video produced by some dancer friends of mine, an homage to our sister science museum the Exploratorium! Big congrats to main instigator and star Jade Stone!
I’m in a dance battle with Oliver, one of our teen museum volunteers, trying to move like a peacock spider in love. His moves are slightly better than mine — his head grows to enormous proportions and sprouts antennae. Then fuzzy legs spring from his abdomen. I am … still me. My dance moves just …
In connection to the California Academy's of Science's latest planetarium show "Incoming!" our visualization studio has created this awe inspiring, 360 degree video of a nearby comet. The video depicts the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft buzzing near comet 67P, also known as Churyumov-Gerasimenko (or “Churi” for short). You can see Rosetta launch a small lander …
I'm excited to share the news that the California Academy of Sciences is hosting our second annual Science Game Jam from April 23-24 at our museum. It's going to be a fun and exciting weekend of game jamming around science topics for select Bay Area teens. Applications to participate in the jam have just opened, and …
Another awesome new youth program at the California Academy of Sciences is our Teen Think Tank, a group of teen leaders at the Academy that provide feedback and advise on exhibits, programs and communications that we produce here at the museum. It’s a group that we’ve wanted to create for a very long time, so …
I finally got a much coveted "women in science" LEGO set, which took the internet by storm a couple of years ago! For those that don't know, LEGOS has a system called "LEGO Ideas" for people to propose to the toy company sets that they want produced. If at least 10,000 people vote for that design, …
I've been thinking a lot about this interview with former Facebook exec and angel investor Chamath Palihapitiya. It's chock-a-block with mind exploding ideas and concepts. As a teen educator, I'm particularly focused on the first ten minutes where Chamath talks about what he sees as a fundamental shift in what counts as "social capital." I highly …