Education and Technology:
Serendip's Experiences 1994-2004

Science as Storytelling

A core ideal of Serendip is that science is a human activity, a shared expression of human curiosity and story telling in which all humans can be involved. From this ideal, a major Serendip initiative is to develop and make available interactive explorations, web based activities related to broad human questions.

Individuals can play with and learn from Serendip activities, in classrooms or out, and come to better understand their own capabilities as scientists and the nature of science itself.

Science as Social Activity

By way of such additional features as online forums, Serendip encourages an understanding of science as a social activity, one in which the sharing of stories among explorers is a central component of the enterprise.

Exploring with Scientific Style

To the right is a sampling of Serendip's interactive explorations. The idea of these exhibits is not to simply illustrate "scientific" and "technological" ideas but rather to give visitors background and interactive materials which will allow, support, and encourage visitors to explore in a "scientific style", by

• observing patterns,
  
  
• generating hypotheses based on them,
  
  
• making new observations directed at disproving their hypotheses in a cyclic and endless recursion.

Since there is something to be learned from the evolution of our own explorations of how to achieve these objectives, the interactive explorations are presented chronologically with brief comments.

Additional Resources on Serendip

• A Vision of Science (and Science Education) in the 21st Century: Everybody "Getting It Less Wrong" Together
  
  
• Science Matters ... How?
  
  
• "I Believe ..." Its Significance and Limitations for Individuals, Science, and Politics
  
  
• Getting It Less Wrong: The Brain's Way: Science, Pragmatism, and Multiplism

• I Am, and I Can Think, Therefore ...

• More on Science: Who's in Charge

• Education as Applied Neurobiology

• Emergent Pedagogy: Learning to Enjoy the Uncontrollable and Make it Productive

Early Interactive Explorations , 1994-96

• The Free Will Problem - among our first exploratory experiences, depending only on HTML

• Seeing More Than Your Eye Does - among our first exploratory experiences, depending only on HTML

  

• Voyage to Serendip - an early exhibit, CGI-based

• Prisoner's Dilemna - another early exhibit, CGI-based

Interactive Explorations, 1997-2001

• Seeing More Than Your Eye Does, Continued - an extension using a java applet

• Tricks of the Eyes, Wisdom of the Brain - continuing exploration of visual and the brain, using a java applet

• Can You See What You Don't See? - further exploration of visual perception, using a java applet

• The Game of Life, one of series of explorations of complexity/emergence, using a java applet

  

• The Magic Sierpinski Triangle, one of series of explorations of complexity/emergence, using a java applet

• Simple Networks, Simple Rules: Learning and Creating Categories, one of series of explorations of complexity/emergence, using a java applet
  

• On Beyond Newton: From Simple Rules to Stability, Fluctuations, and Chaos, one of series of explorations of complexity/emergence, using a java applet

  

• The Four Color Problem, one of series of explorations of complexity/emergence, using Shockwave

Recent Interactive Explorations, 2002-2005

• Time To Think?, one of our most recent exhibits, using Shockwave as well as cgi/database (inactivated here) and with extended information about "doing observational science"

• Thinking About Segregation and Integration, one of our most recent exhibits, using a java applet and with extended information about "doing modelling science"

• The World of Langton's Ant, our most recent exhibit, explores properties and behaviors of emergent systems