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Although microbes directly impact everyone's health, most people have limited knowledge about them. In this article, we describe a museum and media public education campaign aimed at helping diverse audiences better understand emerging knowledge about microbes and infectious disease. Funded primarily by the Science Education Partnership ( SEPA) program of the National Institutes of Health, this campaign involved crosscutting programs designed to extend impacts throughout a broad public audience. Collaborations with partners from public media, libraries, science education, the social sciences, and biomedical research centers extended our outreach to local and national audiences of adults and youth. Our campaign developed programs for radio broadcast, schools, libraries, museums, and publishers to ultimately reach over eight million people. In addition, we conducted a series of research studies focused on understanding the mental models that people create of the complex concepts of microbes and infectious disease and on how to engage hard-to-reach adolescents with this science content. These studies furthered our understanding of how people reason about unseen phenomena, the kinds of materials that might intrigue youth who claim little interest in science, and how to begin to combat misinformation pervasive in this field. Our comparisons of expert, teacher, and teen reasoning about microbes revealed their distinct mental models on the topics of infection, vaccination, and immune response. Our investigation of comics confirmed their power to motivate teenagers to want to read more about science. Across all levels of science identity, we found that youth were more engaged with the comics than with comparable essays. Together, these findings provide insights into how to educate a diverse public about emerging biomedical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University natural history museums are in a strong position to assume leadership roles in informal science education. This will emerge through extensive experimentation, innovative educational practices, broad collaborations, and grant-funded programs. Higher expectations for cutting-edge programs of outstanding quality create a climate in which striving for innovation becomes the norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM) is creating multimedia outreach kits on the research of women scientists. The collaborative effort has included Nebraska Educational Telecommunications, curricula developers, biographers, graphic designers, and evaluators. The goal of the project is to increase the number of girls interested in pursuing careers in science, and to this end, women scientists are presented as role models. Wonderwise kits target students in grades four through six through student-centered, inquiry- based activities, specimens and tools, videos of the scientists working in the field, resource-based CD-ROMs, and short biographies of the scientists. This project presents a model of how museums can collaborate with schools to improve science education on a statewide basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six natural history institutions contributed video and other images to produce a single multimedia exhibit about famous paleontology sites throughout the United States. In Mesozoic Monsters, Mammals and Magnolias, users can view videos of the original excavation of each of the sites and also play computer games relating to each location. This project provides a model for how collaboration among museums can reduce the cost of multimedia exhibits while improving quality and making them available to wider audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girls as a group have far fewer science- and math-related experiences than boys. This article reviews what is known about how these differences carry over into science museums. Behavioral studies indicate that girls generally engage in more cooperative behavior at museum exhibits, and boys explore exhibits more actively on their own. However, there are large differences between institutions and even discrepancies between similar studies at the same institution. Museums may be able to minimize gender differences by anticipating them in the design of exhibits and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the prototyping of interactive exhibits on rocks and minerals at museums in the U.S. According to the author, museums must be the places where people are given the opportunity to see the real objects, as well as understand them. Moreover, museum exhibits should also be designed to provide concrete experiences and ideas to foster the learning of the visitors.

The article provides information on an exhibit design which is the Desert Explorations. It cites that the exhibit has been designed to let visitors choose what they want to explore. Desert Explorations has used technologies such as videodiscs to assist the visitors in the learning process during the exhibit. It is located at San Diego Natural History Museum in San Diego, California.

The article presents a study of The Discovery Room of the California Academy of Sciences. The research assesses visitor’s reactions to the interactive natural history exhibit in order to gather useful information for planning future interactive exhibits. The philosophy of Janet Nickelsburg, a former docent, teacher, and naturalist who first conceived of the exhibit, are explained. Behavioral observations of active exploratory learning, as well as interviews and surveys are analyzed.

The article presents a study which looked at the way in which families behave when they are touring a science museum. The way in which the actions of museum visitors were researched is mentioned. Actions which the study found that visitors were involved with while at the museum are discussed, including visiting exhibits throughout the museum for short periods of time.

Introduces a series of articles on the subject of youth, science and museums.

The article discusses several issues confronting the University Natural History Museums. Public programs are considered in which curators play a very important role in many opportunities and problems of handling the museum. Author Philip Humphrey points out that a number of universities with natural history museums have exhibits and educational programs for the public.

The article discusses various reports published within this issue, including one by Watson Laetsch on university museums' enrichment with research in public education, on the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota's long-term planning efforts in a wider context, and another by Leonard Krishtalka which challenges university natural history museums to use their collections to educate the public about biological diversity.