Attention all educators, artists, scientist, facilitators, and otherwise generally awesome people. The California Academy of Sciences’ Youth Programs is looking for the perfect person to help lead our Teen Advocates for Science Communication (affectionately known as the TASC Force) program as the new Assistant Manager. What is the TASC Force? Well, TASC is one of …
Sophia is a promising young person who I had the pleasure of working with last summer in our "Science in Action" science filmmaking program. She had such a blast learning video production that she asked if there were opportunities for her to keep doing it at the Academy. This resulted in our visualization studio …
Tonight was the second annual "Teen Science Night" at the California Academy of Sciences, what we believe is the largest teen-led celebration of science in a museum in the country. We welcomed more than 1,000 young people to take over the museum for the night, doing cool science demos, showing off awesome tech toys, dancing …
Here is the first of three awesome videos created by a group of teens who participated in the California Academy of Sciences' "Science in Action Summer Intensive" this July. This video "Collections: A Window Into the Past" was created over just a couple of weeks by Kirby, Toby, Aimee and Roman. Enjoy! More about the …
I'm excited to share the news that the California Academy of Sciences will be hosting the second annual Teen Science Night on Friday, August 15th 2014, for Bay Area teens to engage with the fascinating world of science. Teens (13-18 years old) are invited to join us from 6:30-9:00pm at the Academy in Golden Gate …
This is me at my job. Yeah, I'm a lucky duck. On Friday, I had the awesome opportunity to join our new head of research and sustainability Dr. Meg Lowman for some tree climbing in the Cal Academy's east garden. Dr. Lowman, also known as "Canopy Meg," is a champion for forest preservation and …
Are you a Bay Area teen who loves science, wants to geek out about technology, and is interested in making digital media with other teens? The Academy wants you! I’m excited to announce that Digital Learning at the California Academy of Sciences is launching a new program for high school-aged youth called the “TechTeens.” We’re …
To get this blog started, I wanted to provide some background on what the Digital Learning program at the California Academy of Sciences has been doing since it was launched about three years ago. Over that time, I’ve loved getting to design fun and engaging youth programs that combine my interest in tech and my …
Welcome to my new blog, RangerRik.com! This is where you will find my thoughts and activities from my work as a digital learning educator and program developer at the California Academy of Sciences. This is also where I am going to share out lots of the awesome work, tools, approaches, conversations and events happening …
On Thursday, the California Academy of Sciences hosted a fun coding workshop for middle schoolers that I helped facilitate. The occasion was the visit of five young programmers from Cork, Ireland to the Bay Area, along with the Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork, and various other dignitaries from Ireland. The sponsoring organization was called CoderDojo, …