The Women's Adventures in Science project has extensive material to use in your classroom: ten books plus the interactive content on this web site, including games, scientist home pages and scrapbooks, comics, science labs, and a timeline. This section describes each of those content areas and suggests how you can use them.

Book Series

Ten inspiring biographies tell the stories of the scientists’ personal and professional lives. Through lively text and plentiful photographs, readers learn how each woman was led to a career in science and what makes her passionate about her work.

Scientists' Home Pages and Scrapbooks

Each of our 10 featured women scientists is introduced via her home page. The scrapbooks give kids the opportunity to explore the lives, backgrounds, and passions of each scientist. Interactive comic strips explore one important scientific discovery, telling the story through text, pictures, and animations. (Encourage students to use their mouse to roll over each screen to find fun science facts that expand the story.) On each home page, there are videos to watch, science labs to try [link to page 3: Focus on Science Labs], and related Web sites to visit.

Kids will discover that being a scientist is only partly about academics—who you are as a person contributes greatly to who you are as a scientist!

• Cynthia Breazeal
• Diane France
• Inez Fung
• Heidi Hammel
• Shirley Jackson
• Mimi Koehl
• Adriana Ocampo
• Marta Tienda
• Amy Vedder
• Nancy Wexler

Games

Gorilla Quest

Gorilla Quest takes players on an adventure through the jungle in search of a gorilla family.

• Encounter challenges unique to the world of a jungle and to the work of a wildlife biologist like Amy Vedder.
• Make decisions about how to navigate the jungle terrain and what to do when faced with interesting challenges.
• Share in Amy’s commitment to understanding and protecting gorillas.

• Before playing the game, ask students to predict possible hurdles that scientists like Amy Vedder face when tracking gorilla families. Encourage them to do research and be as specific as they can.
• After students have played the game ask five small student groups to choose one of the "gorilla clues" in the game. Give each group time to conduct additional research on their gorilla clue, then set up the room with a trail. Choose a volunteer scientist (perhaps your principal) to travel the path and have each group give a brief presentation about their gorilla clue along the way.

AstroScope

In a scavenger-hunt format, AstroScope players are challenged to explore our solar system, the Milky Way, and the universe beyond, and learn "Far-Out Facts" about objects in space.

• Develop an awareness of the similarities and differences between our solar system, the Milky Way, and the wider universe.
• Develop a sense of spatial relations in the universe.
• Develop beginning understandings of comets, nebulae, galaxies, planets, and their moons.

• The game could serve as an introduction to a unit on our solar system or the universe more generally.
• Students can work in pairs as travel agents for their chosen destination (one of 15 locations in the game). Give them 3 minutes to share enough information with the class to entice the class to visit this location for their next family vacation.

Make a Robot

Make a Robot engages players in constructing their own robot like Cynthia Breazeal’s Kismet. Players will…

• Develop an understanding of humans’ reactions to emotional responses.
• Consider the potential value of artificial intelligence and smart machines.

• The game could serve as a foundation for writing about the "life" of a robot.
  • Start by having students create a robot using this game and print it out.
  • Then, students should create a purpose for their robot, and a set of rules to operate by. Examples include: When you hear someone crying, sit down and ask “Can I help?” When you see someone new, greet them by saying "Hi!"
  • Use these rules and the robot’s purpose to write a science fiction story, in which the robot follows the rules and struggles to accomplish its mission.

Read the interactive comic book, Creating Kismet the Robot, to find out how Cynthia Breazeal created her robot Kismet. Check out the seven video clips showing Cynthia Breazeal and Kismet in action! Discuss how programming machines to exhibit “intelligent” behavior is no simple task. Encourage your students to brainstorm what abilities they would want a robot to have for it to be considered “intelligent.”

Time Travel Timeline

Learn about the accomplishments of female scientists of the past and present.

The interactive Time Travel Timeline gives students a sense of how each female scientist’s work has contributed to her field. Invite your students to consider the challenges women faced in different time periods and consider what challenges Lia—the scientist of the future—might encounter.