SciSpotlight: NYSCI News Digest
September 2012
28 posts
Day One: Buy-in, Breathe, Begin
It’s back-to-school season! To all the educators out there, welcome back and good luck. To kick off the year, NYSCI asked some of our teacher collaborators for tips and tricks that set the tone for a successful (and sane) school year.
We’ll check in a few times over the next few days. If you want more classroom resources from these teachers, all of them are also contributors to Teachers TryScience, a resource for lesson plans, videos, and other resources brought to you by NYSCI, IBM and Teach Engineering. And you can always sign up NYSCI content designed specifically for educators at my.nysci.org
Our first bit of advice comes from Veronica Pastore, a P4K teacher at PS65 in Brooklyn:
August 2012
10 posts
Beauty in the Eye of the Microscope
A rose by any other name … Oh wait, those are stink bug eggs.
Through Friday, the eighth Olympus BioScapes Imaging Competition brings images of beauty captured under light microscopes to our museum. The winning images were selected from more than 2,000 submissions and reflect the latest advances in neuroscience and cell biology. Visitors can marvel at the beauty of stink bug eggs, be awed by the iridescent colors of a damselfly eye, and yes, even admire the peony-like splendor of a fruit fly’s ovaries.
And you thought you’d seen everything.
Photo: Stink Bug Eggs by Haris Antonopoulos
PRESS RELEASE: World Maker Faire Returns
QUEENS, NY—(Marketwire - Aug 20, 2012) - World Maker Faire returns to New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) on Saturday, September 29 from 10am to 7pm, and Sunday, September 30 from 10am to 6pm to showcase the world’s most extraordinary gathering of DIY talents in science, technology, crafting, fashion, food, sustainability, and more.
Play
July 2012
7 posts
Focusing on Bioscapes →
theatlantic.com
The Atlantic’s In Focus blog just posted a selection of photos from the Olympus Bioscapes competition. These amazing pics — which are even more impressive in person — are on view at NYSCI through August 31.
Build a Better Summer Camp -- Just Add Science
from NYSCI President and CEO, Margaret Honey:
Last week, Peter Orszag wrote an article linking summer learning loss with skyrocketing childhood obesity rates.. For decades, educational researchers have studied summer learning loss — sometimes called the “summer brain drain.” In short, summer vacation negates some of the learning achieved during the academic year. This is particularly so for children on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
We don’t expect kids to do algebra at the beach, but there’s any number of ways to incorporate science and math into their summer schedules. And summer learning is, you know, fun and active.
Science in Your Pocket
Want to learn about molecules? Understand extremophiles? There’s an app for that!
NYSCI Explainers have just had their first apps developed as part of Explainers As Designers. The project is a variation on Iridescent’s Technovation Challenge, with teams of Explainers learning the ins and outs of app development while also getting some baseline knowledge of what it takes to successfully bring an app to market. Two apps — Bio-Hatcher and Molecule Rush — were selected as winners and have just been made available for download in both the iTunes and Google Play stores.
“I wouldn’t have thought of trying to program anything prior to taking part in the Explainers as Designers Program,” said Jacqueline, a member of the winning team.
Each app builds on content found at NYSCI exhibits and adds yet another interactive component to the exhibit experience, in the form of games you can play anywhere anytime. It’s a bit of NYSCI in your pocket.
