Free Thinking
In San Francisco and Chicago, College alumni transform education through programs that are innovative, old-fashioned, and free.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 11 A.M.
MISSION SCIENCE WORKSHOP
18TH AND CHURCH STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO

There’s a four-foot ball python around somewhere.

The Mission Science Workshop is packed with kids and parents here for its Family Science Open House. But nobody seems particularly worried about the rogue python, which escapes with some regularity.

Once it was discovered underneath the human skeleton; another time, on top of the drill press. “If you find Monty, please let us know,” reads a message on the whiteboard…

On December 12th, 2011, the CSW Network held an all-staff training for employees from five CSW sites in California. CSW staff met one another, shared project and activity ideas, and learned new science material together. The Directors and complete staff from the Oakland Discovery Centers, Mission Science Workshop in San Francisco, the Watsonville Environmental Science Workshop, the Greenfield Community Science Workshop, and Fresno Community Science, came together in Watsonville for a day-long event.

On December 3rd, 2011, the Greenfield Community Science Workshop held a Grand Opening ceremony to inaugurate the transformation of the former City Council chambers in downtown Greenfield into a full-fledged Community Science Workshop. The new space, at 45 S. El Camino Real in Greenfield, CA, will serve as a community resource for informal science education for all residents of Greenfield for many years to come.

Coachella, CA, is a small town in the Imperial Valley of California with a local economy based on agriculture, and on the revenues from reservation casinos. With many school-aged children, and far from science-rich learning institutions such as museums and universities, Coachella is the perfect site for a new CSW.

The CSW Network brought together staff members, students, families, and educators from four CSW sites across the state to collaborate on unearthing a gray whale that washed up on Pescadero Beach this past June

The CSW Network was invited to participate in the Informal Science Share-A-Thon at the National Science Teacher’s Association (NSTA) annual national conference in San Francisco on Friday, March 11th

CSW Network staff has set up a new blog for the Oakland Discovery Center. We’re busy posting hands-on science activities in a format borrowed from the Exploratorium’s Snackbook.

Hoping to develop a center in Greenfield that would allow the community to explore science through hands-on activities, members of the Mission Science Workshop gave a presentation to the Greenfield City Council last week.

Sal Lua, a high school student employed by the Watsonville Environmental Community Science Workshop, was one of five youth activists singled out for exceptional service to the community by the Santa Cruz Good Times

the Half Moon Bay Review published an article with more details on the story behind the cowboy-style mission Dan Sudran, of Mission Science Wokrhsop, spearheaded to recover the blue whale bones in Pescadero