NISE Network Blog

Thanks, everyone, for your great comments to the first RWN post! Keep 'em coming. I'll respond there and in future posts. The question for today is: why does nano matter?

NSF's Broader Impacts Criterion (BIC) gets a provocative re-examination in a special issue of the British journal Social Epistemology, and in that issue, the NISE Net's focus on science museum - research center partnerships is included as a model for authenticating and reinforcing the intentions of the BIC framers.

The NanoDays kits have been shipped and the digital resources are ready for downloading. Now it's time to get busy thinking about what you actually want to DO with all this stuff! Whether this is your first time creating a public event about nano or you are a NanoDays veteran, it helps to start planning your activities and contacting collaborators early.

NanoDays is next month, and the NISE Net has a number of training materials that might be useful for those new to presenting nano content to public audiences:

Welcome to Real World Nano, a new space to explore what happens when nanotechnology leaves the laboratory and makes its way into the rest of society. RWN is a partnership between NISE Net and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. Our goal is to launch a conversation about how the meaning, importance, and application of nanotechnology in society can be conveyed through informal science education.

Anders Liljeholm, a program developer at OMSI, wrote to me about a challenge in translating our materials into other languages.

Many of our partners have indicated that they do classroom activities of some type, so I'm going to be highlighting a few examples of partners incorporating nano into classroom programs. Please let us know what you've been doing with NISE Net or nano materials for K-12 audiences! Email Rae Ostman at rostman at sciencenter dot org.

Image by Michael Wyszomierski

With the end of the year and decade just ahead of us, lots of people are looking back and compiling their top ten lists (for example, here, here, here, here, and here).

Many of our partners have indicated that they do classroom activities of some type, so I'm going to be highlighting a few examples of partners incorporating nano into classroom programs.

image by James Sarmiento