Chapter 9 to me felt like the chapter that we most discussed in class as a general theme. The fact that learning takes place outside of the classroom over half of a person’s life was something that we as a class always mentioned. This idea of informal science learning being the most prevalent type of learning is rooted deeply in chapter 9 and it focuses on learning outside of the classroom and outside of the museums. This chapter talks about field trips and other visits that can peak children’s interests and get them into the scientific topic at hand. The Bioblitz trip was a great example of a scientific trip that helped to peak interest in students interested in nature, botany, and wildlife in general. It also gave, through the use of an experienced guide, important information about the biodiversity of central park.
This chapter also goes into how technology is now being interconnected with science learning and how the growing use of technological devices, such as cellphones, can be used in a beneficial way to learn more about certain science topics. Nowadays most information does not have to be meticulously searched through textbooks but can be easily google’d and hundreds of papers regarding the scientific information will be readily available. Technology has gone so far as to come up with an app called iNaturalist which lets users post up information regarding their scientific findings and lets other science learners input their knowledge and share it with the original user. This greatly improves the science learning experience and is definitely a fun way to learn. Science and technology are more interwoven than one can imagine and the gap between the two is only getting smaller as the advancement of technology allows scientists to be communicating between each other faster and more effectively.

These four articles focus on the communication of science learning to communities that are not rooted in science. Communicating science in a way that attracts the general public of interested learners is one of the most important aspects of science learning because an important discovery or an interesting science topic is worthless when the results and findings are not communicated properly within as many communities as possible. The communication between scientists in the same field is also very important because it allows for feedback and collaboration between scientific projects and more information from the scientific community that was unknown.
The best way to communicate science is by firstly peaking interest and by speaking in terms that the public can understand. For example, our group project is focused on GMO foods and the pros and cons of putting GMO’s(genetically modified organisms) into foods and the bioethics of genetically engineering any organism in the first place. We presented our information to a group of high school students who had some knowledge of biology but did not fully understand the mechanism of genetic engineering. In order to communicating the science information and help them learn and understand effectively, we had to use basic terms and communicate at a lower scientific level than we would if presenting to a panel of biotechnologists.
A target audience is an important to consider when trying to communicate science and captivating interest also plays a vital role for how much the learners are going to learn about the topic.

Chapter 5 goes into how informal science learning is most effective when the person doing the learning is captivated and interested in the said topic. Therefore, sparking interest early on is one of the most important parts of science learning and will propagate an endless need to discover more about whatever topic the student may be learning. One of the more obvious methods of interesting a certain learner to me would be a hands-on workshop or activities that are so interesting, that one does not feel bored from all the information but rather intrigued. I also don’t think it is possible for one to learn a certain topic to the full extent if there is no interest. I think that if someone is being forced to learn, they will not fully understand and will soon forget the information once it is not necessary. This remind of college and how certain students will either love a class and go out of there way to learn more about the topic, or they will sit through class waiting for the period to be over- not really learning anything of value because of their lack of interest.
I think that it is nonsensical to be in a position where you are being forced to learn something because you have to, not because you want to. I think that students and informal science learners should be studying topics that interest them because they will gather more useful information when curiosity and interest is at a peak. If there is a certain topic that may not seem interesting, encouraging students to go outside of a formal setting and find out if there are any exhibits, shows, or events that correlate to that certain topic that could possibly spark some interest would be a great idea.

After reading this weeks assignment and watching the video on Jamaica bay, it is impossible to disagree with the fact that Jamaica bay is one of the most culturally and ecologically diverse neighborhoods in New York. Located on the southern side of long island, it has many strips of land mass and small bodies of water in the middle that attribute to the vast number of animal species located in Jamaica Bay. Jamaica bay has been referred to as the combination of Central Park and Prospect Park because it is just so diverse and ecologically relevant.

It also has a rich immigrant history because Jamaica bay houses residents with many different religious backgrounds, such as Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity. While religions do clash, it is still a successful form of coexistence in a community and is therefore correct in being called religiously diverse. Many immigrants come to Jamaica bay because the housing is cheaper compared to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, perhaps attributed to the proximity of water to the houses, which can be an issue when dealing with surges, storms, and especially hurricanes like super storm sandy.

I did not know much about Jamaica bay before this week but it truly interests me to know that such an interwoven community exists where religiously and culturally diverse people will come as one in times of turmoil such as Hurricane Sandy, which devastated Jamaica Bay.

The two articles “The Art of the Brain” and “Art as a way of Knowing” both have to do with how understand and analyzing art can be viewed as a scientific process and how art and science are so greatly interwoven that some will argue that art and science are one in the same. The article, Art of the Brain states that art is done so that people can view the art and understand or perhaps learn something new about the art. Immediately, this sounds like a scientific journey, where something previously unknown is observed, analyzed, interpreted and then understood to a higher degree. There are several hypotheses in the article that contrast art and science in their respective complexities and how “art renders complexity” while science is viewed through a very narrow lense with perhaps a more direct path. In my mind I pictured the TED talk we watched in class about a month ago where a route from A to B was drawn and another less direct route was drawn from A that led to C. I felt like in this way C was the “artistic” approach because it had encompassed several forks and turns but inevitably led to some answer, regardless if it was the same answer that B held.
The other article, Art as a way of Knowing, is primarily trying to explain how art is just as important in terms of learning as science is. I agree with the notion stated in both articles that art and science are so alike but also believe that the ways that people learn from both differ greatly. When looking at art, your mind opens up and ideas formulate and try to explain what exactly you are looking at. Science on the other hand can be looked at more pragmatically, where facts and widely accepted theories are trying to be accepted by learners through studious efforts.

The article “The best of Both Worlds: A Critical pedagogy of Place” by David A Gruenewald argues that “Place-based pedagogies are needed so that the education of citizens might have some direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit” (4). What this means exactly is that when learning about a certain topic that is place-based such as central park or a unique neighborhood, it is best to occupy yourself in that location whilst learning about it to get a better understanding of it. This was at first very confusing to me but I quickly understood the function and the practicality of this method when looking back at previous trips my colleagues at Macaulay and I went on last year.
The most memorable trip to me was visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum because I instantly connected the readings from class about immigrants that were struggling to fit families of 10 into a small room the size of a college dorm with what I saw when actually visiting the museum. I saw the knitting factories that the housewives’ established inside their homes to make a few extra dollars a month. I got a true feel for the living conditions that were not so apparent to me when reading the books about immigration in New York City.
Because of this realization I agree with David Gruenewald and I believe that place-based education is an exciting way for people to learn about certain topics because it connects the outside environmental world with the pedagogy of the scientific world. The Bioblitz event that most Macaulay student went to was another great example of place-based learning because we learned about all the different types of plants and animals that were located in central park, a park that is extremely well known amongst us as fellow New Yorkers. Learning about things in the park that I never even knew existed definitely brought me closer in a sense to my surroundings.

Chapter four mentions different ypes of talking associated within a frog exhibit and the subcatergories of both types. The two that stood out to me the most were perpetual talk is the “process of identifying and sharing what is significant in a complex environment” (69) and the subcategories involved are called identification, naming, pointing out a feature, and quoting from a label. These subcategories reminded me somewhat of the six strands of learning because the categories go from less complex and scientific to increasingly so. Identification is simply pointing out what is being observed, naming is finding out what the object that is being observed is, while the last two involve actual scientific methods such as finding a unique characteristic of the object being observed and reading from the exhibition label to find out more. It was noted that this type of converstaion occurs in about 70 percent and is the most common.
The second type of conversation is conceptual talk and is actually viewed as more scientific and more desirable for scientists to see others achieving than perpetual talking. This category covers “Simple inferences…and complex inferences” (70). Even the simple inferences will provoke more meaningful conversation and will encourage discussion and eventually learning. Because asking questions and brainstorming is so important to the scientific community, it is stressed that this type of learning is what should be aimed for but is not as often achieved as science learners would like. This type of talking occurs in only 56 percent of museums. I think that in order to achieve more of this type of talking, museums should incorporate some interesting “book club” so to speak and encourage participants to brainstorm what they see in small groups.

Chapter three mentions three different methods to support informal learning; Juxtaposition, Multiple Modes, and interactivity. The first method requires “juxtaposing the learners’ understanding of a natural phenomenon with the formal disciplinary ideas that explain it” (41). This causes the learner to actively reflect on the meaning of that idea. another way is to provide multiple ways that a person can engage in talking about and learning about a phenomena in the same setting. The last one and probably my favorite is being interactive. Allow the learner to actually perceive the phenomena hands on and quite possibly carry out some sort of scientific investigation.
I think that interacting in the scientific world is the best way to learn because hands on experiments can teach people more when they actually see something taking place rather than learning about it in theory. The “Cell Lab” project is one of the many great ways that informal science learners can take advantage of the resources and equipment found in a laboratory, such as centrifuges and expensive microscopes that would not readily be found outside of the lab. Interested participants would learn about how to
use the popular scientific tools and would be exploring one of the six strands of learning. I also believe that interaction is the more interesting and captivating method of the three and it is especially more effective for the younger generation of interested science learners because hands on experiments are more interesting than just learning about it in a mundane classroom setting.

This article about citizen science mostly focused on how there is a whole other level of scientific researchers that most people do now know about. They are called “citizen scientists”, which is a more polite and professional way of simply saying amateur volunteers. The term “citizen scientist” was coined in the 1990’s but the idea of having nonpaid help to document when plants grow, observe when birds and other animals migrate and etc. These scientists do everything that they possibly can with their set of skills. The article honestly admits the reason that they use these volunteers is because of money. “We can’t afford them,” states Donald Owen, when talking about the graduate students and real scientists.
While it is understandable that using volunteers to collect data that would otherwise would require tedious and not really “scientific” work, I feel as if it is condescending because the citizen scientists are only being payed attention to because they are doing free work simply because the various research programs can not afford to higher high-end researchers to do their jobs. There is no arguing that the volunteers are helpful however, because over 60,000 sign up to participate in an annual Christmas bird count. It is also a great way for people who are interested in informal science to spark their interests and explore the realm of science learning, which relates to one of the six strands discussed in chapter 2 of our textbook.
While it is arguable that acquiring volunteers to do most of the tedious data keeping work for free sounds a bit patronizing, if it is possible for any of these volunteers to become interested in becoming a scientist professionally, then it is worth it in the end and helps shape the future scientific community for the better.