NSF Award
0223584
Sesame Workshop, in collaboration with the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum and the Beijing Planetarium, is planning a planetarium show and complementary materials for preschool-age children and their families, teachers and other caregivers. The planetarium show will be designed for use in the United States and China and will have the following goals:<br/><br/>-- promoting positive attitudes among young children towards science;<br/>-- providing age-appropriate information about astronomy in an engaging, entertaining format; and<br/>-- fostering am understanding of one another among children in the two countries.<br/><br/>During the planning phase, there will be three face-to-face meetings among the principals: at the Beijing Planetarium, at Sesame Workshop in New York, and at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The purpose of these meetings will be to determine:<br/><br/>-- What is the appropriate educational content for the show and complementary materials and what does research with children say about it?<br/>-- How does this type of project best reach preschool audiences?<br/>-- Is there a need or opportunity for producing alternative language or dialect versions of either the English or Mandarin versions of the show and complementary materials? <br/>-- What issues or problems affect the design of the show and complementary materials?<br/>-- What are the implementation issues?<br/><br/>Particular attention will be given to exploring how the project might include cross-cultural information in the show and complementary materials, and how the cross-over characters (Da Naio appearing in the English version; Big Bird in the Mandarin version) might be included in the design.
