People « The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Another of our interns, (actually, they are all Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholars), Nick, lets us know what it’s like trying to prepare for the “visitor tsunami” that’s bound to occur when we get our third wave tank all set, based somewhat on the inundation he gets as an on-floor interpreter:

“Working as a docent for the front desk and touch pools has provided abundant opportunity to interact with the public and I seem to learn as much information as I provide. Visitors ask so many interesting questions and also ask about local marine events: how is the Sea Turtle doing that washed up on the shore, inquiries about the tsunami debris and recently the Brown Pelican crisis at the Yaquina Head seabird colony. Visitors also bring in some unusual items and ask for help identifying them; one man brought in an orca tooth that he had discovered eroding out of a cliff.

Among my favorite duties is acting as the guide for the daily tour of the Yaquina Bay estuary describing the marine plants and animals of the bay. Participants especially like discovering the tiny crabs that are often living under the very rocks they are standing on. It is pretty rewarding and members of the tour group have often told me that after taking the tour, they now want to become marine biologists. I have also been helping with the Ocean Quest multimedia presentation in the auditorium. We have been working out the bugs in the presentation and it is finally at a point where we are happy with it.

Our main project involves working on three wave tank exhibits. Brian has been working with the wave energy exhibit, designing an experimental “wave power” device that looks like a futuristic mechanical snake. Diana has been working with the erosion tank and has had to be vigilant in order to prevent the “sandy beach” from becoming a mess from enthusiastic children. My project has been working with our tsunami tank. I have been working on designing ideal tsunami proof structures as well as showing buildings that will not be able to survive the wave. Using Legos as building materials, I have attempted to construct scale models of different building to see if the various designs are demolished or not with the wave tank.

The tsunami project has had some problems associated with it. For starters we have had endless computer glitches and malfunctions that often make it difficult just to run the machine. We have also been experimenting with different lengths of continental slope (represented by an acrylic ramp). Additionally, we found that Legos seem to stick together really, really well….sometimes so well that buildings that should be demolished are still left standing! We have had to resort to sanding the individual bricks so that they do not stick together as well and will better represent actual building materials. We are hopeful that these problems will be fixed within a few weeks when we plan to open the tank to the public. The educational intent of the display is to challenge visitors to construct a building that can stand up to a tsunami wave. We are confident it has the makings of a fun and interesting exhibit and hope it will be very popular with our visitors!”

Our Free Choice Learning Lab group took our first field trip last Tuesday… Hurray!

We visited the Science Factory Children’s Museum and Exploration Dome and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, both located in Eugene, OR. This field trip and the ones yet to come are intended to get our group out and about! Outside our offices and interacting with others in the field. The objective is getting to know our local museums, their facilities, staff and educational programs, making connections and establishing partnerships with those institutions to crate a network supporting professional exchange and development. The Science Factory and the Museum of Art are the first two in a “Friends of the Free-Choice Learning Lab” list I am creating to support such exchange. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! And… for all of you reading this blog, please let me know your suggestions about what kind of network I should create to better support these forming relationships, as you may know I am not technologically inclined and would appreciate some input as to what you think would be a good way to do this.

I should acknowledge the awesome people we got to talk to during this field trip. From the Science Factory, we talked to Nick Spicher (Education Director), Kim Miller (Operations Director) and Carolyn Rebbert (Executive Director). From the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and UO, many thanks to Sharon Kaplan (Museum Educator for Academic and Public Programs) and Phaedra Linvingstone (Assistant professor in Museum Studies at UO, Coordinator of the Art and Administration Graduate Program). We really appreciate your time and willingness to talk to us about your institution and educational programs and sure hope our group can collaborate with you in the future. We had an awesome time! At the Factory we literally just blended right in with the 48 children around for summer camps. We were also mesmerized at the beauty of the Museum of Art and really enjoyed our experience. Bellow are some photos of us having a really really fun but nevertheless intellectually rich time during our trip.

Recyclotron Exhibit, preventing balls from ending up in the landfill

Optical Illusion... Laura was becoming me...

Shawn, Katie and Phaedra at the Museum of Art

The group at the Museum of Art Courtyard

If you want to know more about the Science Factory please visit http://www.sciencefactory.org

For Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art visit http://jsma.uoregon.edu/default.aspx

Thank you Dr. Shawn Rowe for providing this opportunity for our lab and thanks to all that joined us and contributed to a very pleasant day OUT AND ABOUT!

On this most summer of holidays, while her home state experiences powerful summer storms and heat waves, intern Diana adjusts to her summer home and job:

As a native Marylander, I have been thrown into an environment of cold northwest water and weather. I was definitely not used to wearing pants in the summer or having my hooded sweatshirt as a necessity to my wardrobe.

The first challenge I faced was understanding how the west coast worked in terms of upwelling and the cold temperature of the water here. Once I understood this, I could then understand why the biodiversity that lives and flourishes here can actually do so. I am still learning, and I probably always will be for at least this summer if not more, because the Oregon coast is a complex world.

The next step to fitting in here at Hatfield for the summer was to learn about the Visitor’s Center itself. I had to learn about the animals that live here, the activities and free choice learning aspects that are displayed as well as what my project for the summer here would be. That is a frustrating task in itself. I do know a good bit about marine biology and ecology, but this place was intense. This is mainly because I have only seen a few science centers and aquariums that use the water around them as their water for the marine animals. Hatfield completely relies on the bay its saltwater wedge. If something happens to the water in the bay, then all heck breaks loose in the science center because that’s the water we use. I know it’s filtered a million times in many different ways, but sometimes things still make it through and that’s what effects the marine environment such as bacteria, invertebrates, etc.

Then, there are the surprises I have gotten while working at this job for almost 2 weeks…the Visitors. No matter how many changes in the center, from the animals to the water quality to the behavior, the visitors still surprise me the most. Each family and person is different, from the moment they walk in the door and are asked for a donation rather than an entrance fee. Some give a little, some give and wish they could give more. There are people who are from out of town who just want to see the octopus and people from landlocked states and have never seen an estuary before. You also get visitors who know nothing about the Oregon coast or marine ecology. Then, before you know it there’s a kid who comes in and knows more about sea stars than you would ever know, no matter how much you studied. Each visitor has their own story, and that is what makes my job so exciting because not only is science ever changing, but so are the people that want to learn.

Another of our interns, Julie Nance, gives us a run-down of her first week at HMSC.

We had a very busy first week at Hatfield! It has been full of some incredible trainings. Our first adventure was tromping around in the mud with Dr. John Chapman. We collected mud shrimp for his research on the mud shrimp’s isopod parasite and were able to see this critter first-hand. We then had a series of trainings on the estuary tour including a power point presentation, and going on the estuary walk with 3 different presenters so we could see different styles and create our own. This weekend we began presenting the tours ourselves with a seasoned presenter accompanying us.

We also had the pleasure of going to the Cobblestone beach tide pools at Yaquina Head, and saw a variety of invertebrates and some fish. We have also been taken through a tour of all the animals at the visitor center by the aquarists, and Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan taught us all about the salt water system. Amidst all this excellent scientific information, we also learned about visitor center closing procedures, money counting, and the Ocean Quest presentation which we will begin giving to the public next week.

Brian, Nick and Diana will start doing the visitor center programming this week- specifically the estuary walk and helping out at the visitor center. This week will also be filled with a lot of research in order to begin our projects. If any of us appear to be missing, there’s a good chance we can be found at the library with our noses buried in the resources available to get the ball rolling on our wave and climate change projects.

Normally, once the majority of undergrads have finished their third term finals and graduation is a teary memory, there is a calm that overcomes campus that those of us here year-round have come to expect. Don’t get me wrong, the undergrads are the reason for this institution, but there are an awful lot of them (and more each year).

However, this year, I’m in a bit of a pickle. My study is specifically trying to target the general adult public, that is, those with a high-school degrees but maybe not a lot of undergraduate experience. At Hatfield, we generally have a slightly higher-educated population than I need. Also, my experiment takes an hour, so the casual visitor is unlikely to break from their group for that long. And my local campus population, at least my local congregation of said population, has just skedaddled for the summer.

So I’m busy trying to find anywhere those remaining might be: the very few residence halls that remain open (which also requires navigating some tricky flier-posting rules), the occasionally-open dining halls, lecture halls which might still have classes and bulletin boards nearby and the library, MU, and some local eateries. I’m also heading to the community college where many students are cross-registered and where they might be knocking out some core courses during the summer on the cheap(er). Hm, maybe I should post a flier at the local store where my incentive gift cards are from? In truth, this is really still just a convenience sample, as I am not plastering fliers all over Corvallis, let alone anywhere else in the state or country. At least, not at this point …

Any ideas welcome! Where do you go to find your research subjects?

I’ve started trying to recruit subjects, including first-year undergraduates and oceanography faculty, for my dissertation work. And it’s a slooooow process, partly due to poor timing, partly due to everyone being busy.

It’s poor timing because it’s finals week here at OSU. Not only are students consumed (rightly) by those end-of-term tests, it’s finals right before summer break. So on top of everything, people are scattering to the four winds, frantically moving out of apartments, and scrambling to start summer jobs or summer classes. So, I’m being patient and trying to think creatively about recruiting a fairly broad, random sample of folks. So far I’m posting flyers in classroom buildings and dining and residence halls, but my next step may be standing in front of the library or student union with all the folks trying to get initiatives on the ballot for November.

The faculty are another story, of course. I can easily get contact information and even fairly detailed information about their experience with visualizations. However, they are also quickly scattering for summer research cruises – two I called just today are leaving early next week for 10 days to 3 weeks. Luckily, I got them to agree to participate when they get back. I’m still getting several brush offs of “too busy.” So my tactic to fight back here is to find other professors they know who can make me less of a ‘generic’ grad student and thus somewhat harder to say no to.

All in all, it’s rejection the same as in exhibit evaluation, just with different excuses.

Stay tuned!

The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Informal science education research

Category Archives: People

Preparing for a different type of tsunami

Getting out and about!

“Summer” at the Visitor’s Center

Tales of the first week

Summertime Blues

Recruitment Woes

Contact Info