November 2012
7 posts
Beyond rooftop gardens: Farmers Market 2.0 @ NYSCI
Learn about the ideas and methods for urban growing and food preparation at this conceptual winter farmers’ market, December 1, 2012; noon – 4 pm. Traditional market stalls will be filled with hands-on activities, artist projects, demonstrations, and of course, food! Free with NYSCI admission.
Staged presentations:- Tim O’Neal: Borough Bees and beekeeping
- ReGen artist Ricardo Miranda Zuniga and Brooke Singer talk about their project ExcessNYC
- Ricks Picks does pickling
- Master composter from the Queens Botanical Garden
- Food related video compilation
- Butter-making with Little Makers
- Hydroponic farming systems with Boswyck Farms
- Solar panels with Biomodd’s Tamara Sabler and Zach Smart
- Spice bundles, seed bombs and seed masks with NYSCI Explainers
This community-based food event focuses on the cultural and sustainable elements of food and food production that pertain to ecology. The event complements NYSCI’s ReGeneration exhibition.
What can animated creatures teach us about genomics? NYSCI aims to find out. →
nygenome.org
New York Hall of Science Teaches Genetics with Video Games
By Christie Rizk on Nov 04, 2012
What can animated creatures teach students about genomics and related scientific concepts? Researchers at the New York Hall of Science’s Sara Lee Schupf Family Center for Play, Science, and Technology Learning (SciPlay for short) aim to find out. In collaboration with scientists at Michigan State University, developers at the Concord Consortium, and designers at Parsons The New School for Design, they’re creating a video game to boost students’ enthusiasm for and understanding of genetics.
GeniGames teaches both research and applied science, says SciPlay Director David Kanter. Four versions of the game will be used in different New York City high school science classes this winter, while SciPlay researchers track which elements contribute to students’ understanding of scientific concepts. “We’re measuring learning, but we’re also measuring a lot of different affective dimensions of learning like motivation, engagement, and emotional state,” Kanter says. “As opposed to taking it for granted that games are great and that everything should be gamified, we’re trying to understand what the value is [and] for whom.”
In GeniGames’ first version, students design and breed their perfect pet lizard as they learn about concepts like meiosis and genetic inheritance. The second version adds a bit of narrative backstory to the game and replaces lizards with dragons, using the same scientific curriculum. The third adds an element of competition by asking students to design dragons for specific tasks such as racing or catching fish. And the fourth adds the element of community: SciPlay will host a competitive tournament among participating classrooms. Underlying the game are sound genetic concepts based on the known genomes of various animals, so it is realistic, Kanter says.
The study is set to end in August 2014. “We have a hypothesis that not all of these gaming elements are across-the-board great for all kids, so we will be looking into our data at the level of individual students to figure out for whom does narrative really work,” Kanter says. Data gathered in the high schools could also help SciPlay and its collaborators to eventually design games for younger children, he adds.
Christie Rizk is a reporter and editor based in New York. She was most recently an assistant editor for GenomeWeb’s Genome Technology magazine, and has worked as a reporter, editor, and producer at Reuters, Thomson Financial, and The Brooklyn Paper.
