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 Academy and other science institutions in the United States and …
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 …
Barry Joseph turned me on to “Hyperlapse“, a free app from the makers of Instagram that enables you to easily create a timelapse video from your smartphone. Here’s a quick test of the app I made while walking around the main floor of the Cal Academy today. Really easy to use, and lots of potential for doing …
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.
We've got three, adorable baby penguins on display starting today at the California Academy of Sciences. They've been kept in quarantine for a couple of months as we get them ready to be on public display. You can learn more about how we do that in this short video. I got to check out …
The awesome Emily Graslie of the Field Museum of Chicago posted on her Instagram feed this simple but profound statement on the recent vandalism of the Mosul Museum by ISIS: "Imagine if all our display cases – like this one – were empty. As custodians of one of the great natural history museum collections in the world, The Field …
My colleagues in the Cal Academy's Digitization Team, Anne and Codie, have graciously scanned these beautiful images of coffee beans for me , using our fancy GigaMacro super high-resolution camera system (which I'm calling "Maggie" from now forward.) This was a test to show how the public can get a better understanding of the various …
One of the important responsibilities we have at the California Academy of Sciences is archiving the vast treasury of scientific specimens that we maintain, over 45 million specimens at last count. Much of those collections remain hidden behind well protected walls and shelves, inaccessible to the general public, and only available by special arrangement to …