Thank you for your kind words. We are as exited to work on the project as we are to share our findings.

Hi Victor,
We have gotten some great comments from visitors. Things like, “Thank you! This is awesome! We don’t have to pay extra for this?!” or a mom who thanked a ranger, saying, “My kids will remember this for the rest of their lives.”

I can think of challenges in every aspect of the work we are doing. As we develop visual libraries for different parks with the chosen, featured researcher, we all wonder how to make this kind of collaboration sustainable. We are hoping that the scientists will see the benefits of public exposure and increased public understanding. As a result they will then be willing to commit time to professional development for the park interpreters and take time to develop visualizations that will captivate visitors. For our work with Acadia National Park, we are working with new media students at a local university. We’d like to create a precedent for collaboration among faculty who do park-based research, the park interpretive leaders, and the student designers. If we can repeat this process successfully with new researchers next summer, I think we’ll be on to something.

Documenting the response, both interpreters’ and visitors’ is a challenge, particularly when conversations are informal, outside, many happen in a row, etc. We will keep experimenting—google forms, tally sheets, text messages … Any suggestions??

That does sound like a challenge. I think that it can be powerful and helpful to give visitors the chance to create their own documentation. Perhaps you could develop a station for visitors to draw or describe science experiments they would do in the park, or ways that certain science experiments going on at the park could be visualized in a creative way? Just a thought. Thanks again for your work!

I love these ideas. We did an event for the public in Bar Harbor where we had NPS staff and others from the area tell stories about their research—coincidences, catastrophes, break-throughs. Beforehand we handed out cards and asked everyone to complete the sentence, “Research in parks is …”. We got very thoughtful submissions—drawings and words. One person asked for a second card.
All to say, I think an invitation to draw or write and to be creative would be welcomed.
Sometimes I feel a little let down for visitors when they make a suggestion that isn’t viable. But that is part of the process. The first idea is not always the best or most doable idea.

Hi Karen,
Finally, I am in reach of wi-fi. The iSWOOP team has been on location in Maine. At the beginning of this work Acadia staff kicked off professional development with paleo-ecologist Jacquelyn Gill. The plan is for interpreters at Acadia National Park to take what they know from their work in the field with her and begin weaving this research into their programs for the public. The several visualizations related to plant and animal community change from the last, say, 14,000 years, will be available on an iPad.

Today the team talked about how interpreters can use the visualizations in different ways. They might be a compelling, colorful hook at the beginning of a conversation. They might be a prop for explaining a complex idea. Or they might be the basis for an inquiry-oriented interaction where the visitors together begin to observe patterns, speculate, predict, and question. This last is most central to iSWOOP, but of course, can’t happen if there’s no audience, so it’s convenient to have visuals that are literally arresting.

Everything we design is meant to be in interpreters’ hands. Visualizations are meant to accompany questions and information provided by an interpreter, a place-based expert. We don’t design for kiosks or for independent visitor use.

Challenges? Tablets are portable, but they aren’t large enough for a crowd of 10 or 15 to see easily. Interpreters who are excited about sharing knowledge might tend to leave out the part where the visitors get to puzzle out something for themselves.

At our pilot site, Carlsbad Caverns, interpreters used images of the baby bats quite frequently during informal interactions with visitors (chitchatting in the cave or visitor center). Of course, the charismatic, adorable baby bats are more popular than graphs of precipitation data which help predict the bat population. We’d like to make sure that conversations that start out with bat facts touch on the research questions and findings that bat researchers have and the potential relevance for visitors.

Thanks for your great response Martha. I really love way in which the science is woven into conversations/interpretation. Congratulations on a fantastic and important project.

Thanks for your great response Martha. I really love way in which the science is woven into conversations/interpretation. Congratulations on a fantastic and important project.

Hi Joni,

Like most elements of iSWOOP, the visualizations are developed collaboratively among the scientists whose data they are based on, the informal science educators and the interpreters. The project team brings additional expertise in visual narrative, design, technical production etc.

The project is growing from the original pilot site at Carlsbad Caverns NP to 5 additional parks over the next 4 years. Each park features different scientist(s) so the visualizations are specific to their work and by extension to the interests of the visitors. At Carlsbad Caverns NP, the visualizations were about bats and caves, at Acadia NP they will be about biogeography, paleo-ecology and landscape change over time.

And thank you for the kind words! We are thrilled to share the project with this group and the broader public!

Nick

Thank you Susan, We had a lovely time on the SERC Campus kicking off the second phase of iSWOOP. Thanks for taking such great care of our participants.

Thanks for being a friend to iSWOOP! I hope you enjoy some excellent programs this summer. You’ll have to let me know if you learn anything new about the how researchers figure out when different plant and animal communities were thriving and dying in the area.
All the best,
Martha

Hello Joseph, OMG is right, right?

In this phase of the iSWOOP project we have selected 5 additional parks to further test out the professional development model. We piloted the project at Carlsbad Caverns National Park over the last 2 years. We just finished our Kick-off Institute with park participants from Acadia National Park, Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, and other project advisors. We are in the first year of this new, expanded project and still working out what works for the many different kinds of sites within NPS, and learning what organizational support is needed to sustain the model. It is a goal to find a set of guiding principles that could be adopted by NPS sites across the country, to help tell the stories of scientific discovery and give park visitors the opportunity to learn and get excited about how we know what we know.

FANTASTIC! Have you considered a train-the-trainer approach to scaling this up? (i.e. clump regions of National Parks together [unless there is already this structure organizationally — I don’t know!]) and designate certain folks as the trainers and build up those trainers? Do you think there is a role in PK-12 students taking part in helping sharing the incredible research going on to support peer-to-peer learning? Thanks for responding so quickly – I recognize these questions are really high-level and pie-in-the-sky.. but you really piqued my interest here. :)

This isn’t really answering your question, but we are considering all approaches for scaling up. We are using Carlsbad Caverns as our testing ground for scaling up/sustainability purposes. They have been working with us the longest and we are working with some key personnel there to add new scientists, science stories, and visualizations this summer.

Because this is an ISL project we did not envision a role for PK-12 students.

I would add to Louise’s response that university students of the featured scientist can easily be involved both in the field work with interpreters and as “experts” involved in the professional development. If a park wants to include hs students, volunteers, or interns in the professional development sessions, we are all for it. Anyone who will interact with the public, who wants to know more about the research, is welcome.

We imagine interpreters taking a leadership role in professional development in their own parks, as new staff come on. Most interpreters have a pretty demanding schedule and I’m not sure how training at other parks would work. There is a precedent for this with facilitated dialogue training, so now you have me curious about that. The Park Service has regional centers and research learning centers with staff who have some responsibility for training and technical assistance at more than one park. Some interesting possibilities to consider. Thanks, Joseph!

Thank you Myriam, for the kind words.

Thank you for the kind words.

Hi Douglas, Thank you for this note. Please share the link with some of your VT friends. I haven’t yet let Rolf know about it.
All the best,
Martha

Betsy, Nice connections! I know Julie Vastine and the work of ALLARM (am I spelling that right?) One challenge ahead is to interest visitors in historic places in some of the climate change and other interesting science opportunities at hand. Please keep us posted on that.
We are also finding that stories of the researchers are engaging for the public. Maybe even more so in a historically focused park. Telling and retelling stories about who started monitoring and why and what the frustrations are and what will happen once the researchers figure out the next step will likely add to the public’s interest. Please keep us posted!