SMILE Pathway

Posted Wed, 07/28/2010 - 2:43am by shsi
Grant Number: 
0735007
Target Audiences: 
SMILE (the Science and Mathematics Informal Learning Educators Pathway), is designed especially for those who teach a diversity of children in non-classroom settings including museums, science centers, aquariums, observatories and other after-school programs.
Partners: 
SMILE Pathway is a joint project of UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), the Exploratorium, the New York Hall of Science, Science Museum of Minnesota, Children’s Museum of Houston, and the Association for Science-Technology Centers. Through a seed grant program to expand the initial founding partners, four additional partners have been added: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Center of Science and Industry (COSI Columbus), TERC, and Twin Cities Public Television.

HOWTOSMILE.ORG UPDATE
July 2010

SMILE, which is in BETA (howtosmile.org), is preparing to be formally unveiled at the annual meeting of the Association of Science-Technology Centers in October of 2010.

SMILE Collections & Cataloging

SMILE currently has 407 reviewed and vetted "live" STEM activities, and 515 selected activities with metadata in the NCS “holding pen” awaiting review.

To help train new partners, staff, and volunteers in SMILE cataloging, a set of screencast tutorials linked to the website were developed with step-by-step instructions of how to use the SMILE NCS. SMILE Metadata guidelines have also been updated to reflect the latest metadata schema including informal learning categories. (http://howtosmile.org/feedback)

SMILE Technology & Meeting with Technical Network Services (TNS) Staff

In March 2010, we held the second of three productive face-to-face technical meetings in Berkeley. The UCAR participants at the meeting were: Katy Ginger, Mike Wright, Jonathan Ostwald, and John Weatherley. In addition, staff from SMILE, Engineering Pathway, and Ensemble gathered with TNS to cross-fertilize ideas and work synergistically. The following topics were discussed:

NCS and Drupal

  • wish list items and fixes
  • NDR API
  • XML import/export, RSS, ATOM feeds
  • moving NCS data into Drupal
  • community features, searching

TNS and Berkeley-based Pathways (SMILE, Engineering Pathway, Ensemble)

  • Drupal and NCS
  • common modules (SMILE's or Ensemble's Stack Overflow)
  • widgets
  • future development

Strand Maps, Widget, & Visual Search

  • drag & drop alignment or alternate displays
  • opening up the strand map for Ocean Literacy, etc.
  • what we've done so far, and what we're planning to do

SMILE Widget

An embedded SMILE search application and API for external websites was created and mounted at the Science Museum of Minnesota’s website. We anticipate this “widget” will be a preferred way to use SMILE, and help place the functionality of SMILE directly into the users’ own learning path and workflow. The widget continues to get updated with Version 1.3 available for use: http://howtosmile.org/widget/

Implementation of Community Features

The site is built upon the open source Drupal Content Management system (CMS). Two additional features are currently being specified and implemented as community functions: an online badge system using StackOverflow and contextualization pages for specific topics (e.g., oceans literacy, chemistry with public audiences) and communities (e.g., school librarians, homeschool parents.).

SMILE Outreach and Communication

In anticipation of the official launch, Linda Devillier, a public relations and marketing executive was asked to review major activities and to provide strategic outreach and communications recommendations to the SMILE Management team. During the month of April Ms. Devillier conducted interviews with SMILE’s Advisory Board members; researched a number of potential National Partners representing the private and public sectors; spoke to the leaders of CAISE (Center for the Advancement of Science Education); attended the annual conference of the National After School Alliance; met with NSDL leadership and conferred on a regular basis with SMILE senior team members. The result was a plan for diversifying the SMILE National Partnership Program.

SMILE has launched several communication venues including an email newsletter, a blog using ExpertVoices, and a Facebook fan page.

SMILE Team has attended and presented at the following conferences:

  • CAISE Summit, Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education Summit, March 2010
  • National Afterschool Association, March 2010
  • National Science Teachers Association April 2010
  • Maker Faire, San Mateo, CA. May 2010

Through it’s partnership with ASTC, a series of virtual workshops about SMILE features were conducted using the ASTC Connect site in Moodle.

Project Staffing Changes

Ken Bell at LHS was hired to be the main SMILE project manager. Joel Rosenberg at LHS is the SMILE technical product manager. Lauren Lindskog at the Exploratorium is the lead cataloger. Erin Van Rheenen at the Exploratorium, in addition to collections development, also serves as the online communications manager.