The Nord Family Foundation has provided support to numerous non-formal science providers over the past few years. These institutions typically are staffed by people exquisitely trained in their field. Some examples of organizations we have funded include The Great Lakes Science Center, The Cleveland Botanical Gardens, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the < href=" http://www.lensc.org">Lake Erie Nature and Science Center and the The National Inventors Hall of Fame. The educational materials are exquistely prepared and reflect the most exciting and current research in their fields. The challenge for these institutions is getting their people and their great materials into the schools. Budget cutbacks in schools across the country mean that these rich educational resources are able to get to schools ony where there are private funds, which are typcially foundations. These charitable dollars are scarce and a challenge to cobble together. In rural areas, there are not many foundations so the chance of getting private dollars to support projects like this are almost impossible. The result, kids in rural school districts are left out of these opportunities entirely.
Another major problem we have found is buy-in from the school administration. In most cases, the portal into the school is the one or two science teachers who understand the value of the resource and are willing to work to get the instituion to come to the school. The frustration for a foundation is that grants are made, typically in the $25,000 range to provide a program that goes to the one school classroom or building and/or to provide funding for the class to come to the institution. The further you move to suburbs the less incentive there is for schools to take advantage of these national educational resources.
Wouldn't it be great if we could get a cohort of non-formal science organizatons to post their material and develop a wiki! One example is the terrific teacher's guide avalable for programs at the Great Lakes Science Center Teachers Guide on THE GREEKS. Currently, this guide is an electronic version of a printable teachers text. What could happen if this "flat" text were to be made "dimensionial" by a collaboration of teachers, university professiors, aficiandos that would bring some interesting tools to enhance the presentation.
Would it be possible then for this group to find a way to make that living text available to teachers in rural districts and/or economically strapped schools using affordable applications such as cell phones, i-pods to deliver the curriculum to the students. If it were not available in the classrooms, bring the kids to the public libraries, most of which have internet acceess.
Any thoughts?
