Harrison Baker works as an aquarist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. His academic background is in animal husbandry, journalism and editing. He is currently pursuing an MS in Free-Choice Learning Science Education.
His board game, Deme, is currently under development as a component of his MS project on games and adult learning.
The design process for our climate change gallery is now underway. In addition to presenting current science, we’re designing the gallery to address the values and cultural beliefs that inform the discourse on this topic. One of the main concepts we’ll be drawing on is the “Six Americas.”
We want the climate change gallery to be as participatory as possible, allowing visitors to provide feedback and personal reflections on the content. Most of our exhibits deal primarily or exclusively with knowledge. This gallery will focus on personal beliefs, and how these influence the ways people learn. It should be an interesting project.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s a little piece from the Science and Entertainment Exchange about the science of cooking a turkey. I’m thankful for it.
Mark Farley officially joined the Oregon Sea Grant FCL Lab and Visitor Center team, accepting the position of project and technology development manager for the Lab development process. Mark had been working as part of the exhibit development team here at the visitor center as a contractor to Oregon Sea Grant, and was part of the grant writing team responsible for bringing in the NSF award.
Mark came to us from Pathworks, Inc., where he served as VP and operations manager in the development of interactive media, custom software, and marketing campaigns for public and private clientele.
“The work Oregon Sea Grant is supporting through their Free-Choice Learning Initiative here at the Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitor Center, and the creation of the free-choice learning research lab is some of the most exciting and professionally satisfying work I’ve ever participated in. The real delight is getting to work with such an exceptional team of creative people.
My first task is to get the project milestones anchored, and start working on the technology development plan. No small task considering how many unique technology tools we will be developing for the lab, not to mention the three new exhibits which will serve as focus point for our research. We’ve got some remarkable industry partners, the support of OSU’s Free-Choice Learning program in the College of Education, and OSU’s Office research to ensure we fulfill the vision of creating the first national free-choice learning research facility. Exciting times ahead!”
If you look carefully at the above photo, you can see Ursula sulking in the background. When I put my hand into the tank to check the new camera’s frame rate and motion blur, she turned a sort of red-on-white paisley—an unfamiliar pattern that I interpreted as a statement of disapproval inexpressible in any vertebrate language.
Our improvised test housing was a wooden box of paper towels from the touch pool, with the camera fixed in place by a wad of towels and cloth diapers. For further structural support, we rested the camera on a jar of formalin-preserved octopus eggs inside the box. The final installation will have a rather more stable and elegant housing. Prototyping is a fantastically organic and immediate process.
We’ve been struggling with this potential replacement Octocam for the past week. This was a neat, compact security camera that strongly resembled HAL from 2001. We took it into the Visitor Center, plugged it in, typed in the IP address, and…
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that.”
We got nothing. We tried a different Ethernet cable. We tried using another port. We tried reconfiguring the network. We tried installing new drivers. After several frustrating days of experimentation, I unplugged the AC adapter to see if one more power cycle would end our troubles. Before I could plug the cord back in, Mark stopped me. The network light was blinking! The camera was happily negotiating a connection with the server on Ethernet power alone.
Apparently, the AC adapter was turning off the Ethernet power, disabling the Ethernet connection in the process. Plugging the camera in caused it to not work. Perhaps that most insulting of tech support questions (“Is your device plugged in?”) doesn’t have as obvious a correct answer as it seems.
Once the camera started feeding to the network, we discovered a different problem: the frame rate just wasn’t high enough for our standards. This model would make a fantastic security camera, but it made a so-so Octocam. As much as we dislike prolonging our time without a tank-level Octocam, we can’t justify trading one problem for another.
We’ll have another model in soon, and hopefully this one will give us what we’ve all been waiting for.
Did you catch OSU’s Lynn Dierking on Science Friday today? If not, here’s the link.
What is the natural relationship between leisure and learning? Does a quantifiable difference exist at all? I find that my leisure activities always entail some kind of learning, and I think that’s the norm. The things we do for fun involve seeking experiences, furthering interests and relationships, developing skills and solving problems. Even when we sleep, our brains process information.
As a child—years before I moved to Oregon—I often played the much-beloved Oregon Trail computer game (primarily version 1.2). There was no separation between the “fun” parts of the game and the “educational” parts. The educational content formed the mechanics and narrative of the game, and it was great. I wasn’t “having fun and learning” (a perennial edutainment cliché) because even that phrase implies a natural distinction between the two.
The drive to learn is inherent in human development. Even when a child moans about his homework, it isn’t truly the knowledge he resists—though he himself may think it the case—but the context (or lack of it).
It isn’t enough to make learning fun. At the FCL Lab, and in OSU’s broader FCL Science and Math Education programs, we strive to remind our audiences and ourselves how much fun learning already is.
“A focus on participation in a broader context and the openness to leave the physical building offers unique opportunities to cultural institutions to build sustainable relations with their audience.”
The inflatable basking shark exhibits atypical feeding behavior.
Today was Homeschool Day in the Visitor Center. This event gives our education staff an opportunity to work with children and families from a wide variety of learning backgrounds. It’s also a lot of fun. This time around, visitors were greeted by a life-size, inflatable basking shark. As busy as it was, this Homeschool Day went smoother than the last, which was interrupted by a tsunami evacuation.
The new and improved Octocam is almost here! We’ve been struggling with our underwater octopus webcam for some time, mostly due to the effects of seawater exposure. We’re going ahead with our plan to install a camera outside the tank, and we’ve already ordered the camera. That should mean just a couple of weeks until the Octocam is better than ever.
When the previous Octocam was in place, Ursula liked to sleep nestled between the tank wall and the back of the camera. She held the flexible hose containing the camera’s network and power cables against her forehead like a teddy bear—sometimes pulling the camera slightly out of position in the process. This was great for visitors, but not so great for our viewers at home. The new camera will have a pan-tilt-zoom function, so we should be able to see Ursula in some out-of-the-way places. Stay tuned!
