I'm excited to share the news that the Cal Academy's award-winning planetarium show "Habitat Earth" is now available free-of-charge for educators to use in their classrooms. This 25-minute planetarium dome show has been re-mastered as an HD video that can be downloaded and shown to students as part of their lessons on biodiversity, food systems, …
So this interchange happened during my Techteens program yesterday. They were researching whether it is possible for the human mind to be uploaded to a computer. Alex: Guys, GUYS, telekinenis isn't real, right? Ori: Sure it's real, I'll show you. Alex: Let's see it. Ori: I'm going to use MY MIND to move my backpack… My MIND sends signals …
Neil Degrasse Tyson is one of America's best known and most loved scientists, for very good reasons. I'm always blown away at what a great science communicator he is. Here's Degrasse Typson just killing his appearance on the popular NPR quiz show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". Listen to it, and then scroll down for the …
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 …