Update 11, April 2006

What contributions are science centres and museums making in your community? What best-practice approaches by science centres and museums make a difference to important government agendas such as increasing young people's interest in science careers or communicating challenging science topics to the public? This is a monthly update on a project focusing on such questions in the APEC region.

International Polar Year

The third International Polar Year (IPY) will commence in 2007, 125 years after the first such year (1882-83) and 75 years after the second one (1932-33). IPY activities will engage scientists from many countries and will also aim to get the public to realise how much the polar regions influence life on all parts of the globe. The Association of Science-Technology Centers is planning an ambitious IPY initiative - International action on GLObal warming (IGLO) - to raise public awareness of climate change. A session at the May conference of the Asia-Pacific Network of Science & Technology Centres in Perth, Australia will also consider how science centres can contribute to IPY. How will your science centre or museum contribute to IPY? Find out more.

Nanotechnology in European science centres

The March issue of this newsletter mentioned a number of science centres offering or planning exhibitions, public programs or online resources on nanotechnology. Here’s another one: this year, during March-September, eight science centres in eight countries in Europe, with the support of the European Commission, are featuring a common exhibition module on nanosciences and nanotechnologies. The consortium aims to inform and stimulate public debate and to collect visitor opinions on the subject, to form the basis of recommendations to the European Commission at the end of the project. Details of the project.

Online resources - evaluation

Two organisations carrying out research on non-school educational programs are the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) and the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP). CILS projects are carried out through collaborations involving the University of California Santa Cruz, King’s College London and San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Both CILS and HFRP have extensive websites which offer background reading lists, research reports, and links to other relevant sites. Find out more.

Science resources online

A recent ASTC newsletter drew attention to a January article in the UK’s ‘Daily Telegraph’, in which Steven Jones (professor of genetics at University College London) highlighted the usefulness to science writers of online science resources such as the non-profit Public Library of Science, Stanford University’s HighWire Press, and PubMedCentral, the US National Institutes of Health’s free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Such resources are also an invaluable tool for researching content for science centre and museum exhibits and programs – check them out if you have not used them before. Find out more.

A farewell

I’ve been a part of the project team for the APEC Science Centre Impact Project at Questacon in Canberra, Australia for about a year, but will shortly retire from work at Questacon. My thanks go to Brenton Honeyman and others here at Questacon for their enthusiasm and support, and to all those in other institutions round the world, who have supported the project. My best wishes to you all – Ilze Groves.

Brenton will continue to coordinate the project, and will be leading a full-day program on ‘Tackling challenging topics’ at the forthcoming ASPAC conference. ASPAC conference details.

New on our website

For a summary of what’s new on the website each month, check on the main news page of the site.

Contact

APEC Science Centre Impact Project Secretariat
Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre
King Edward Terrace, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
E apecproject@questacon.edu.au