 The Public Science Day 2000 Story
To celebrate Public Science Day 2000, OMSI teamed up with The WinterHaven School, a K-8 science, technology and math special interest school in Portland, Oregon's Brooklyn neighborhood.
OMSI and WinterHaven set out to combine formal and informal learning to enrich science education for an entire school. Discover our goals, how we met them, and what we learned along the way.
The Proposal | Working Together | Science Inquiry
Putting It Online | The Event
The Proposal
 OMSI's primary goal for Public Science Day 2000 was to enable WinterHaven School to use the Museum's resources to enrich science education for all its students.
With this focus, we hoped to enrich the relationship already established between OMSI and WinterHaven, and further refine the model for other collaborations between schools and OMSI's informal science learning environment.
OMSI and WinterHaven's proposal to Public Science Day 2000 outlines three areas for collaboration between OMSI and the school:
 Professional development in science inquiry and advanced technology for WinterHaven faculty.
 Training and exploration in using advanced technology in science inquiry for WinterHaven students.
 Additional curriculum and activities for WinterHaven students' science inquiry investigations around the Public Science Day 2000 theme "The Science of Everyday Things."
Working Together
 As OMSI staff and WinterHaven faculty began working closely together, we quickly understood that it would be difficult to realize everything planned in our ambitious proposal within the time and budgetary constraints of the Public Science Day 2000 project.
In prioritizing our efforts, we resolved to stay true to the underlying goal of the proposal: to enrich science education for all WinterHaven students.
To reach this goal, we refocused our efforts in three dramatic ways.
We decided our collaboration for Public Science Day would last the entire 1999-2000 school year, knowing that some projects would not be complete on Public Science Day itself.
We worked with another funder to help pay for OMSI passes for all WinterHaven students and faculty so they could visit OMSI not only on Public Science Day, but throughout the school year.
We stepped back from the specific plans in our proposal and worked to tailor our Public Science Day 2000 projects to the established curriculum and specific interests of each of the six WinterHaven teachers.
As a result, we've been able to realize projects true to our original vision for Public Science Day that complement, rather than burden, the work of educators at both WinterHaven and OMSI.
Science Inquiry
Throughout the fall and winter terms, teachers from WinterHaven have teamed up with OMSI educators in specific science areas and collaborated on curriculum and experiences for students in each of the six WinterHaven classes.
Because WinterHaven's three middle school teachers each teach a different subject area to all three middle school grades (6-8), their students have the chance to participate in three different Public Science Day projects that tie in to their curriculum at school.
WinterHaven middle school math teacher Paul Griffith's project is Math/HTML. Through Mr. Griffith's collaboration with WinterHaven computer lab technologist Kate Millgard and OMSI web developer Nate Angell, all the WinterHaven middle school students have expanded their knowledge of Internet technology and web design. The students used their new skills to create their own math portfolio website, showcasing both their math studies work and their web design skills. WinterHaven students has gone on to build another web portfolio site for their social studies of Ancient Greece.
WinterHaven middle school science teacher Wendy Archibald's project is Willamette Watershed, an investigation of the biology and chemistry of watershed ecosystems. Ms. Archibald and her students collaborated with Brenda Novak, Greg Dardis and Katie Chiavarini, educators in OMSI's Watershed Lab and Earth Sciences Hall, and Dr. Rick Brudzynski and Nina Molumby, educators in OMSI's Chemistry Lab.
Carrying their inquiry outside the classroom walls into the community, WinterHaven students and OMSI educators are also working with the nearby Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge to explore urban waterway habitats and water quality.
WinterHaven middle school language arts teacher Jo Strom's project is Inventors Inventing. During the Spring 2000 term, WinterHaven students will be complementing their investigations into the history of everyday technology with hands-on inquiry sessions explaining the science behind everyday inventions with educators from OMSI's Physics Lab.
 WinterHaven's three primary school teachers each have their own double-grade class for all major subjects, including science. Because WinterHaven is a recently-formed science, technology and math special interest school, primary school teachers Dave Huckuba (K-1), Peggy Garcia (2-3), and Suzanne Hahn (4-5) will collaborate with OMSI School Support Specialist Stacey Fiddler on Benchmarking Inquiry, a project to formulate inquiry- and standards-based science curricula for students at the younger levels.
On Public Science Day and throughout the Spring 2000 term, WinterHaven's K-5 students will also be coming to OMSI for various activities focused on "The Science of Everyday Things," such as "Build Your Own Computer" in OMSI's Computer Lab, and "Anatomy of a Robot," a part of OMSI's Spring 2000 Changing Exhibit: Robotics.
Putting It Online
From the beginning, OMSI and WinterHaven planned to build their Public Science Day 2000 website as an integrated part of the collaboration between students, staff and educators. The results exceeded our expectations: in addition to the materials prepared by OMSI staff and WinterHaven teachers, a large part of the materials you will find on this site were created by the WinterHaven students themselves.
 Thanks to the generous gift of a digital camera to WinterHaven by Public Science Day sponsor Unisys, students captured many of the digital photographs used in this website and many others recording their work and activities. As a special project, teams of WinterHaven middle school students also captured individual digital pictures of the entire student body to make special OMSI Public Science Day 2000 badges to wear on their trips to the Museum.
 The centerpiece of the WinterHaven students' contribution to the website is the Math/HTML Project Portfolio, a math studies website with 26 (and counting) student portfolios of geometry-based math problems. Each student portfolio includes math problems, animations illustrating geometric concepts, and students' explanations of the web design techniques they used to build their portfolios.
WinterHaven students have already used the web design skills they honed for Public Science Day 2000 to create another portfolio site, presenting students' work on the Geography, Technology, Social Organization, Culture and Belief Systems of Ancient Greece.
OMSI and WinterHaven are proud to present the students' work on this site as a model for how everyday computer technology and basic HTML training can enable rich, student-powered portfolios.
The Event
OMSI and WinterHaven celebrated Public Science Day 2000 on Thursday, February 17, 2000 at the Museum. Visit the Event Showcase now for highlights of Public Science Day 2000 at OMSI!
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