Showing posts with label NSF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSF. Show all posts

Monday, December 7, 2009

New Grant Means Green Exhibit Guidelines Coming

Gyroscope will be participating in a new NSF grant out of OMSI: "Promoting Sustainable Decision Making in Informal Education". It's a two-part project, with part 1 being an exhibit:
"The project responds to calls for broad environmental education of the public in response to environmental crises (such as climate change), and specific research suggesting that even museums that do provide information about such issues rarely help their visitors learn to make the comparisons necessary to make more sustainable choices. For the public audience, the project team will create a 1,500 sq. ft. bilingual (Spanish/English) exhibition to encourage the public to develop skills in making personal choices that affect the sustainability of their community."
Part 2 is geared towards the professional audience, and will consist of guidelines:
"For the professional audience, the team will create a set of tools and indicators for assessing the sustainability of exhibit-development processes, using the triple bottom line of financial, environmental, and social impacts. For example, a Green Exhibit Guide will provide resources and a checklist for exhibit development projects, and will propose field-wide standards analogous to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings. Regional workshops will engage exhibit developers, designers, fabricators, and administrators in using the tools in their own institutions."
Scott Moulton, LEED® AP of our office will be an advisor for the professional audience segment of the grant. We'll post relevant updates as they become published. Congrats to the team!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Citizen Scientists Right Under Our Makeup Brushes

makeup, skincare, citizen science, national science foundation, NSF, museums, maria mortati
Last week, I was dinking around online looking for user-generated content on women's skin care products. Yes, I use them. I wanted to know what's working and what's b.s.
The biggest discovery wasn't that the cosmetics industry is based on hype, but rather, there is a whole universe of women (and v. few men) who are testing products, chemicals, solutions, sharing their findings, and iterating their approach based on the shared data.
I think that if a bit more organized, these folks could make a passionate, ready-made group for citizen science, and would be thrilled to find out a way to broaden ...and validate... their reach.
Plus I'd bet they'd love to get their hands on some real information that might give them real results.
Anyone from the NSF wanna bite?