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Boys put flyers above urinals in their school. Nothing else to look at…
Girls put flyers on external restroom doors. Everyone has to use the restroom at some point in the day.
Announcements at half-time during football and basketball games. Both kids and parents are in the audience.
@Ann Boes – Thanks for sharing Ann. I once created a working knee and ankle with straws, paper clips and some other items. It was an activity out of a kit based science series from Lawrence Hall of Science or something like that. We had a blast working on that challenge and learned a lot. Can you post a link to the activity you used so that others might also use it?
One of our best hands-on in NM was creating and exploring holograms. We had an artist and scientist who specialized in holographic imagery lead the cafe. They were in their mid-sixties and still rooted in the 60’s. Their language, dress, and world view were classic sixties and the kids enjoyed them very much. The talk focused on the big idea that we do not see objects, we see reflected light off of an object. Thus, if you can modify how light is reflected off an object you can change the perceived color and shape.
We used light filters and different types of light to see how the image in our eye changed for different objects. The artists had been commissioned to create holograms of many famous people. The one they were most proud of from the artistic sense was of Ronald Reagan that is in his Presidential Library, but it kind of ate their heart out, because they did not like his politics.
So, the presenters were “cool”, the hands on was “cool”, and kids walked away with new perspectives on life, history, art, and science.
Ann – Thanks for sharing. This is an awesome opportunity for any teacher to get funding for their projects. Or for each of the adult leaders to motivate their teens to help keep their cafe alive. I will share it with my adult leaders and local teachers.
Thanks for sharing this!
As time goes by, I see the presentation at a teen cafe being much more like a TED talk – the best ones – which focus on story telling. Great TED talks are that it is focused on answering one interesting question – not two, three or four questions. Just the big ponderous one. Finally, the best TED talks are not crammed with high density information, they convey the story with words that paint clear images in the listener’s mind and stimulate emotions. Finally, TED talks are short but rich, and lead to very interesting questions.
I am attaching a short document that explores story telling in science as a resource for this session.Here is the link http://www.cmu.edu/student-org/pcr/media-files/pcr-sessions/pcr-storytelling-techniques.pdf
I will also put it in our Resources section on the website.
When teens are directed to attend the Teen Cafes rather than making a free choice, with few exceptions, they do not participate or worse, they are disruptive. That is why the emphasis is on free choice. There may be incentives, but the teen must take responsibility for his or her free choice to walk in the door.
I have on only a few occasions had to remind a teen that they made a free choice to participate and if they have changed their mind about it, I encourage them to leave. A few leave because they never wanted to be there, but most change their attitude.
If the Cafe turns into any thing but free choice, it is no longer a joy, and becomes a punishment.
I have seen parents make the Cafe a punishment in their over zealous desire for their child to be involved and to like it as much as they do. It is a disaster for the child, when this happens.
WE developed a list of types of businesses and government agencies that are common in most locations that could have a STEM professional who could engage teens in the issues and forefront topics of their field. I will look around to find it.
Forensics, mortuary, sewage treatment, power generation, utilities management, civil engineering, someone from the county extension service, garden clubs, computer clubs, etc. I have always wanted to get some of my ultra runner friends who run 100 miles to talk about the physiology of the body when doing such extended extreme exercise.
While we think of experts as those in academic or other research areas, there are many folks who are doing regular jobs using STEM.
Accounting, economics, marketing, actuary science, veterinary, ISP, computer repair shops, auto mechanics working on 21st century cars, weather service, local radio stations, ham operators, local astronomy club. The science and engineering of of digital cameras, phones, and all the other tech kids use.
Because these are so practical and part of a teen’s life – they also can get kids attention.
Observing the folks in Raleigh NC – they also do all the work at the meetings. They have at least two, sometimes three meetings in preparation for the cafe.
When we used to have two cafes per month in each of four towns in NM (this is how we started our cafes and why Mike has white hair and I have lots of grey), we had a much more engaged teen leadership. They got to know one another better and the cafe was on their mind more often, which led to better follow through. Otherwise, teens are no different than adults – when something is out of sight – it is out of mind and does not get done.
So, I think the trick is to have more contact with the kids in meetings.
Thanks for the links and ideas Lawrence. I can see some direct connections to what we are trying to accomplish with teens in cafes. It would be interesting to try and design an experiment that is implemented across several sites to see whether/how a community is built among the teens attending the cafes and how that might be different than the community experience of the teen leaders. My question is, how can we make the experience of the participants as rich as that for the leaders (assuming it is richer for the leaders).
Thanks for the links and ideas Lawrence. I can see some direct connections to what we are trying to accomplish with teens in cafes. It would be interesting to try and design an experiment that is implemented across several sites to see whether/how a community is built among the teens attending the cafes and how that might be different than the community experience of the teen leaders. My question is, how can we make the experience of the participants as rich as that for the leaders (assuming it is richer for the leaders).
There are some really wonderful citizen science projects out there and some citizens have been able to make real discoveries. But, the reality of most of the projects is that citizens contribute or maybe even verify data, but too many projects have little or no opportunities for analysis. This is an issue that many projects are struggling with. There are over 200 citizen science projects, but too few have the citizens doing anything more than gathering data or verifying data.
EBird is a successful project that has opportunities for citizens to contribute and to do their own research. Zooniverse has some space related ones also. Is anyone besides Nicole and I involved in a citizen science project now?
Snap Chat is hard for me to understand from the perspective of communicating with a large group of teens. While stories can be seen multiple times in 24 hours, the chats are very short lived. Shorter lived than my memory these days. So, other than cute little ditties that people might share, is there an example of something more substantive happening on SnapChat?
Thanks for sharing the info on #scistuchat on twitter. I went and looked at the stream from the last chat and it is very interesting. I suppose it must be a fast moving conversation to keep up with. But, it does show another dimension of how we could do virtual cafes and create virtual communities among teen cafe sites and within sites.
Maybe we can get a group of teens and adults to join the chat next month. I found a page that indicated when the next one was to be held, but I lost the link. Do you know the time? The date is Feb 12.
As for your comment about Twitter having lots of science information, that is very true to my experience. But, so far, we have found very few teens in those chats. Maybe I just missed them. Today I came across a teen who wants to be an astronaut but I think that is the first teen I have see that is talking about science on twitter.
The post from the researcher on social media was a good reminder that one person’s views of social media use only capture a sector of users. I wish he had done more to point us to his research about what a broader spectrum of users are doing. I did not look too deeply, but did not find any updated report on the Pew internet website.
