Vrylena Olney's blog

Looking for ideas for NanoDays 2012? I'll be highlighting some examples of NanoDays activities from the 2011 NanoDays reports in the NISE Net blog over the next few weeks.

A number of partners last year included science theater in their NanoDays offerings, with many adding the 10-minute Attack of the Nanoscientist play to their lineup:

Before Troy Dassler was coordinating outreach and labs at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, he was an elementary school teacher helping his students explore nanoscale science.

Looking for ideas for NanoDays 2012? I'll be highlighting some examples of NanoDays activities from the 2011 NanoDays reports in the NISE Net blog over the next few weeks. I encourage you to get in touch with the partners listed to learn more about their work, or to contact your regional hub leader for additional ideas and support.

A visitor explores solar panels made by local industry partner Konarka at the Museum of Science 2010 NanoDays. Photo by Josh Reynolds.

Our NISE Net partners at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History recently organized a number of events with Yale materials scientist and NISE Net advisor Ainissa Ramirez as part of their “Cool Science Week.”

The "Horton Senses Something Small" activity

In 2008, Dennis Clougherty, a physics professor at the University of Vermont, called up nearby ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center to see if they’d be interested in working together to host a NanoDays event. In the three years since, ECHO and UVM have developed an ongoing partnership.

What do 17th-century Japanese literature and a science summer camp in Syracuse, NY have in common? Haiku!

The Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse, New York has been working to incorporate nano content into their ongoing summer camp program. As part of that effort, they’re using the haikus from the Nano Bite newsletter to spark discussions about science content.

As many of you know, NanoDays is the NISE Network's annual festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering and its potential impact on the future. Each Spring, hundreds of NISE Net partners across the country plan and host local NanoDays events (find out who participated in NanoDays 2011 here). We in the NISE Net ask that partners hosting events let us know about their experiences by filling out an online NanoDays report.

Many NISE Net partners planned great NanoDays events at their museums or research centers, but a few went a little further afield. For instance, as part of a comprehensive line-up of events for NanoDays, the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the University of Albany hosted a series of programs at a local mall!

With many (but not all!) NanoDays events now over, it's time to fill out your reports! The report is available at this link). However, if you're not quite ready to fill out the report just yet but want to read through the questions first, you can download the attached pdf version with all the questions and text from the report.