Our Expanding Universe
Interest is higher than ever from new people keen on hosting cafés via their library, museum, science center, college MakerSpace, 4-H club...you name it! Who do you know that might be interested in a teen science café at their institution? Have them email info@teensciencecafe.org.
With membership growing, this is where the power of the Teen Science Café Network comes in. We know how to bring scientists and teens together to share, explore, and learn. Though we are geographically-dispersed, we are connected by our shared passion and expertise for making STEM come alive in the imaginations of our teens. We have experience in helping teens to take the reins and become leaders who plan, market, and run cafés for their peers—how cool is that!
It’s Time to Take Stock
We each have to rich resources to share with the Network. Let's come together more than ever in 2016 to share these tips, guides, and templates with other café coordinators and newcomers. Together, we help effect something greater than when we work alone.
CALL TO ACTION: February Open MIC on Teen Leadership Share your leadership guides and resources with new members.
We will post them to the Resources for others to use. Email us.
"So...teenagers plan and run the cafés?!? Free Webinar: TEEN LEADERSHIP: Recruiting, Training & Organizing Tuesday, February 16
10am PST/11 MST/12 CST/1pm EST
Come with questions and gain new ideas from 3 panelists who have successful and unique set-ups for their teen leader groups.
We are often asked by new Members, what does a teen science café look like? What is the ambiance? What happens at a café? And, do you have any videos we can watch?
We’ve assembled 4 short videos that give you a sense of a café. If your café has created something they'd like to share, please do!
In 2007, we were one little teen science café. Now we are found in 17 states with 23 members who work with teens from all demographics, altogether producing 37 series of café events. In the green room are 10 prospective members in CO, DC, AK, NM and MD.
TSCN Membership and use of the café model are FREE(!). New members mayapply for a small grantto help with costs for things such as food and materials for hands-on activities at the cafés.
TSCN Members' Workshop Update Postponed - date TBA
Thank you to those of you who filled out last month's planning survey for the workshop. The response was good and many of you are interested in common themes for sessions at the workshop. Preparing scientists for the teen audience, developing effective hands-on learning elements, and empowering teen leadership were all very popular. We heard you and are making plans for the best workshop yet!
We'll be in touch soon with the new date and location!
SPOTLIGHT on Veronica Young and Teen Cafés in Rural Maine
Not all café locations are the same. Some are held in large museums or libraries in big cities. In the less densely populated areas, cafés take place at community centers or even Masonic Lodges, where teens have to commute to attend. Today we focus on Cafés in Rural Maine, Spotlight onVeronica Young.Veronica is the Stem Guide for theBlue Hill Hubof theMaine Mathematics and Science Alliance,but also a world-renowned, award-winning documentary filmmaker. What an amazing combo! Read more...
Café Advertising Tip!
Teens update their Facebook profile pictures with poster of upcoming Café
Teen Leaders in Los Alamos, NM are taking advantage of a new feature in Facebook to advertise their Café event. Facebook's algorithm ensures that when you update your profile photo, ALL of your Facebook 'Friends' get a notice of the update.
What's New: If you upload a new profile picture to Facebook from an iPhone or Android, you can now choose to have it expire after a set amount of time, and it will automatically switch back to your previous profile pic. So this allows teens to temporarily post an image advertising an upcoming Café event to all of their friends.
STEP 1. Create a poster or image (jpg, png, pdf) with the information about your upcoming Café. Ideally, you want the image to be square, and for it to be 180 x 180 pixels to fit the dimensions of Facebook's profile picture space. Pictochart.com is very intuitive, and you can download your creation as a .jpg, .png or .pdf and there are many other tools.
STEP 2. If you need to re-size and re-shape a poster to a square use a program such as Mac's Preview, Mac Photo, PC's Paint, or a free online cropping program. Otherwise, Facebook will prompt you to crop a square out of your rectangular poster and it may cut out some details.
STEP 3: Ask all the teen leaders to post it to their Facebook profile picture!
Café Scientifique, New Mexico: Up close and personal with the human brain
In the News
"The Awesomeness of Teen Science Cafés and Students Embracing STEM Learning Outside of School"
Blogger Doug Williams writes about how "Teen Science Cafés are a great way to increase students’ interests in STEM outside of the more formal school environment. A student’s curiosity can be nurtured into a passion, with the help of leading scientists, opening up a host of future career opportunities."
He includes his own tips on how to set up a Teen Science Café, with which we agree! "Passive learning is passé..."
This work is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant #1223830. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.
