Powerplay: Kids Measuring Their Bodies' Responses to Physical Challenges

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In response to nationally identified needs for new educational approaches related to children's fitness and diet, The Children's Museum of Houston (CMH) and Baylor College of Medicine (Baylor) propose to develop and disseminate a long-term exhibit entitled, "PowerPlay: Kids measuring their bodies' responses to physical challenges." The proposed Phase l/ll project will engage children and their families in inquiry-based investigations that promote understanding, positive attitudes, and healthy behaviors related to physical activity, diet, and the effects of exercise on the human body. Specific Aims are to: 1) engage children and families in physical challenges and related activities that prompt them to increase their physical activity; 2) enable children and families to plan and track their own physical activity and nutrition; and 3) facilitate children's and families' understanding of research and the research process. PowerPlay will develop, evaluate and make available the following products and services: 1) an interactive, long-term exhibit at CMH (4,500 square feet), PowerPlay, that engages visitors in a set of interconnected, novel, and rigorous full body physical challenges integrated into a complex, multi-story structure; 2) planning and tracking devices and strategies, PowerPlanners, for children and family members to record their bodies' responses to a host of physical activities, and record their progress on a password protected personal web log; 3) inquiry-oriented demonstrations and facilitated activities, PowerScience, developed and led by educators, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; 4) a pre/post museum field experience web resource containing six guided inquiry lessons (downloadable), professional development "virtual workshops," and opportunities to interact with other teachers who are using the lessons via facilitated discussion forums on the same site. At Baylor, the partnership will involve the Center for Educational Outreach, the Center for Collaborative and Interactive Technologies, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and the Children's Nutrition Research Center, which is affiliated with Baylor's General Clinical Research Center at Texas Children's Hospital. The Houston Independent School District, the nation's seventh largest school district, also will collaborate in evaluations of the exhibit and related classroom components and in project dissemination. Project evaluation will encompass: front end assessments of project concepts and strategies; formative assessments that include prototyping of each exhibit component and field testing of classroom activities and professional development sessions; and summative assessments of immediate visitor responses to the exhibit and follow-up telephone interviews to achieve better understandings of impacts over time. Over its lifetime of at least 15years, the exhibit is anticipated to engage more than six million visitors.