San Francisco is a world-class city in so many ways, including our over-abundance of amazing cultural institutions. We have not one, but TWO amazing science museums — the California Academy of Sciences and the Exploratorium. And we have a rich variety of art museums, including the DeYoung, the Legion of Honor, the Asian Art Museum, and …
Over the weekend, I powered through Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, a quirky mixture of true life space adventures and a self-help book. Like a lot of people, I fell in love with the mustachioed Canuck from his many wonderful videos from the International Space Station, during his 144 …
For the next few days, I am in lovely Montreal, Canada for the annual conference of the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC). ASTC is basically the annual geek-fest for science museum professionals. This is my fourth ASTC, and for once I am attending simply as a participant. In past years, I’ve presented, …
As I wrote about previously, MacArthur Foundation is winding down its support for the “digital media and learning” portfolio (I.e., digital learning, as we know it) into a new nonprofit. Now we know what it's called: Collective Shift. Main points from their press release: Collective Shift has received $25 million dollars in seed money from …
This weekend was the first national Climate Game Jam, happening at sites all around the country. For us, it was a super fun and inspiring two days of game hacking, science exploration, and team building, all to educate young people about climate change, and what they can do about it. The Climate Game Jam was …
I gotta admit, I'm all aflutter about "The Martian" film opening on Friday. Like other space nerds, I loved Andy Weir's self-published novel, devouring it over a weekend. And the screen adaptation looks like it's mostly faithful to the material, bringing cinematic scope to what is essentially a series of life-and-death tests that can only …
A couple of months ago, as a going away surprise for a colleague, I created "Analog Spaceteam," a non-digital version of the wonderful mobile game of the same name. It was fun trying to come up with ways to capture the spirit and energy of the digital game, but adding the fun of having physical …
The Field Museum of Chicago is one of my favorite natural history museums in the world. The Field is one of the country's oldest natural history museums, dating back to 1893, as an outgrowth of the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Those deep roots are evident in the neo-classical architecture, old school dioramas, and …
The cool folks at TechHive at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley have launched a crowdfunding campaign to expand their programs to reach 75 Bay Area teens this year. It's a really cool program that helps Bay Area teens become not just makers, but educators and science communicators in their communities. Head to their …
If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an educator, it’s that you can only be a jerky foreman to your youth miners for so long before they fight back. But I’m getting ahead of myself in the story… Back in 2009, I was in one of the principal educators running “I Dig Zambia.” “I Dig Zambia” …