SciFair Showcased at 9th International PCST Conference
May 18, 2006
Ithaca, NY
Contact:
Laura Cima
607.254.8757
Margaret Corbit, Cornell Theory Center's (CTC) SciFair Program Director, is speaking at the 9th International Conference on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), May 17-20, 2006. The conference is the first of its kind in Asia and is hosted by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the Korea Science Foundation.
Corbit's talk will focus on SciFair (http://www.scicentr.org/Explore/VirtualWorlds/SciFair.aspx) and the underserved, rural or minority students who use the site. She hypothesizes that students are influenced by cultural knowledge and prior experiences when creating their virtual exhibits. The paper reviews five different SciFair student programs and evaluates the role of culture in an effort to better understand how learning is taking place at the site. SciFair is CTC's internet-based science communication fair and part of CTC's innovative on-line SciCentr. SciFair's multi-user virtual environment encourages teens to explore and communicate science while increasing scientific literacy.
PCST is an international network of individuals who are active in producing and studying practices, methods, ethical issues, policies, conceptual frameworks, economic and social concerns, and other issues related to the public communication of science and technology.
About the Cornell Theory Center
CTC is an interdisciplinary research center at Cornell University focused on providing cyberinfrastructure resources for research and education; these resources include high-performance and data-intensive computing hardware and expertise, visualization, and K-12 outreach. Scientific and engineering projects supported by CTC represent a wide variety of disciplines, including bioinformatics, behavioral and social sciences, computer science, engineering, geosciences, mathematics, physical sciences, and business.
