What is Science Buzz?

Multiple-award-winning Science Buzz is both a website and a library of digital and traditional exhibit components focused on science in the news, emerging research, and technology.

It:

• integrates up-to-the-minute science news with interactive experiences and object-based displays;
• challenges visitors' perspectives on museums' role in addressing today's science issues;
• personalizes museum experiences and extends they beyond the museum walls, linking visitors with activities, resources, experts, citizen science opportunities, and each other;
• encourages visitors to be savvy consumers of science information and makes science content engaging and relevant by using real voices (scientists' and visitors') to tell science stories;
• puts a variety of researchers and their work in the public eye and allows visitors to interact with them; and
• its "templates" and digital infrastructure allow developers to create experiences quickly, responding to and communicating science stories in real time.
  
  

What if I only want content on specific topics, or I want the screens to match my exhibit?

Content driven from the website to the exhibit floor can be customized (within reason) to match your exhibit design and chosen topic(s).

You can create your own content, but the community can also help contribute stories to keep your topic fresh.

Who's using Science Buzz now?

There are currently Buzz kiosks in:

• SMM's Disease Detectives
• The Field Museum's Nature Unleashed
• SMM/American Museum of Natural History's Water: H20=Life
• and North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (one focused on health and one focused on energy and the environment).
  

What's next for Science Buzz?

We are requesting supplemental funding from NSF to try to develop a distribution plan that makes Science Buzz affordable and usable by other institutions.

If you're interested in becoming part of the Science Buzz network, or talking about how Science Buzz might work for your institution, please read through the rest of this wiki, and then contact us! We want to hear from you.