What is DragonflyTV: GPS?

Dragonfly TV: GPS 'Going Places in Science' takes viewers on location to 15 science centers around the country, from Texas to Minnesota and from New York to California. The special edition shows were developed to demonstrate the rich learning experiences available for kids in science centers everywhere. The shows feature kids pursuing their own inquiry-based investigations, beginning in science centers and extending to discoveries in the real world. DragonflyTV: GPS encourages families, informal educators, and teachers to utilize their local science centers as science education resources.

Show Descriptions

The fourteen episodes of Dragonfly TV: GPS feature 30 science centers in 14 regions across the United States. The DFTV website includes a city page, museum page, and segment page for each of the segments. See below for links to those pages.

• Alaska — Deborah and Brittani learn about changes in glaciers over time at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center before scaling the Mendenhall Glacier to track its movement; Starting at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center in Ketchikan, Emma and Gracie investigate tree growth rates in three areas of Tongass National Forest.


• New Mexico — Alex and Andrew head to Explora to investigate how much hot air is needed to make balloons fly before soaring to new heights at Albuquerque's International Balloon Fiesta; the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science inspires Emily and Isabel to travel to Carlsbad Caverns and track cave swallows.


• North Carolina— SciGirls Sarah, Valencia and Sophia tromp through diverse wetlands after a visit to the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science; SciWorks' barnyard gets Imran and Nabil thinking about what it takes to raise farm animals, prompting visits to local donkey and dairy farms.


• Montana | Yellowstone— Nicole and Ellen dig up a dino bone at Egg Mountain and then head to the Museum of the Rockies to find out how old their dino was when it died. Phoebe and Shannon roam Yellowstone National Park investigating why some areas have geysers while others do not.


• New England— Elly, John, Nick, and Linnea get help from the MIT Museum preparing a kinetic sculpture for the Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction challenge. At the Montshire Museum of Science, Chloe and Jesse get wet and wild creating a gravity-powered water fountain.


• The Deep South—Joshua and Sean get down and dirty studying the composition of garbage at the Southern Environmental Center. The swamp exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science inspires Katelyn and Blake to check out the characteristics of alligator habitats along the Mississippi River.


• Hawaii— Starting at the Kilauea Visitor Center, Julia and Briana investigate lava flow on the Big Island at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Zach and Devin assess the readiness of baby sea turtles for release into the wild at the Maui Ocean Center.

• Pittsburgh — Amy and Maya see why bogs help keep organic material from decaying and view the preserved humans in a traveling exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History; DFTV daredevils Tyler and Aditya design their own roller coaster and test it on a simulator at the Carnegie Science Center before finishing their investigation on the Phantom’s Revenge, a roller coaster at a nearby amusement park.


• Dallas | Fort Worth — Fossil detectives Brandy and Ashley go on a Dino Dig at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; Reed and Nick investigate how the size and shape of baseball bats affect the location of the “sweet spot” at the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.


• Los Angeles— Max and Brian create model sailboats at the California Science Center before setting sail for real; Milan and Harison compare California fish in tanks to those in the wild at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific.


• Minneapolis | Saint Paul— Maxine and Hannah create musical instruments at the Science Museum of Minnesota; Rylee, who uses a myoelectric prosthetic arm, explores how the electrical signals in her body help her arm function at the Bakken Museum; and Paige and Nick check out zoo animals’ sense of smell at the Minnesota Zoo.


• New York— Jenn and Emily, junior athletes from the U.S. Luge team, investigate their starts on the Science Playground slides at the New York Hall of Science; Stanley and Jessica visit the Congo Gorilla Forest at the Bronx Zoo to learn about biodiversity in the African rain forest.


• Phoenix | Tucson—Alexandra and Anna put their engineering smarts to work building a doghouse after visiting the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix; Alex and Mark see what lives in a cactus forest at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.


• San Francisco— Peter, Emma, Aaron, Ixchel, and Kaitlyn create an installation art project, experimenting with light and color at the Exploratorium; Claire and Nisha take off from the Lawrence Hall of Science to investigate earthquakes by walking fault lines around the Bay Area.

 Find a Science Center Feature

DFTV’s extensive Science Center database contains over 1,000 listings for science museums, hands-on science centers, natural history museums, zoos, arboretums, aquariums, and children’s museums across the United States. Search our database to find resources for informal science learning near you. (Centers can be found by state, zip code, or keyword—name of science center or city.) In addition to exhibits, most science centers offer organized education programs for schools and families.

 Super Navigator Sticker Games

These offline games encourages young viewers to place each of the 15 featured science centers on a U.S. map, which can be downloaded as a PDF from the Printable Puzzlers page of the DFTV site. Whether completed by watching the shows on tv or online, the sticker game is fun way for kids to test their DragonflyTV: GPS mettle.

 Tips for Visiting Science Centers with Tweens

• Every exhibit may not be age appropriate for tween audiences. Prevent boredom by planning your visit ahead of time. Most museum websites offer exhibit descriptions. Have kids decide what looks interesting online before arriving at the science center. Then guide them to their choices.
• Schedule your visit when the science museum is least busy, which is often weekdays after school tour hours. (If you’re not sure when a museum is the busiest, call them first.)
• Bring friends. Sharing the experience is more fun for kids, and grownups learn a lot about their kids by watching the interactions!
• As soon as you arrive, check your coats. It’s hard to have fun if you’re lugging around a jacket or sweltering! Then decide on a meeting point with benches and in good view of a clock. Make everyone say out loud the name of the area (floor or level) and meeting time.
• Pay attention to your children’s learning styles. Let them approach museum exhibits on their own terms. Some kids may want to focus on a particular science topic or area of the museum. Others may take a more open approach, trying out all the museum has to offer. Either way, encourage you child to enjoy the science.
• If your tweens are visiting a science center with younger kids, have the older kids act as mentors or explainers. Older kids can help their younger siblings and friends by reading exhibit text, helping with hands-on experiments, and modeling that science is fun!
• On the way home, ask the kids what exhibits they’d recommend to other kids, or what they’d like to come back to see, and why.
• Extend your visit when you are back home by utilizing the science center’s website. Many sites have games and activities developed especially for kids.

Download DragonflyTV: GPS Activity Guide

• Glaciers [PDF, 272 k]
  Watch a glacier model on the move.
• Temperate Rain Forest [PDF, 268 k]
  Investigate how a tree's trunk diameter relates to the height of its lowest branch.
• Balloon Fiesta [PDF, 280 k]
  Explore convection and unlick the secrets of why hot air balloons rise.
• Cave Swallows [PDF, 261 k]
  Try this investigation to see how caves form.
• Wetlands [PDF, 281 k]
  Learn how wetlands clean up their act with this simple activity.
• Farm Animals [PDF, 279 k]
  Compare and observe the differences between domestic animals and wild animals.
• Geysers [PDF, 281 k]
  Make a model geyser from simple household materials.
• Baby Dinosaurs [PDF, 361 k]
  Look for a relationship between skull size and body length among various dinosaurs.
• Kinetic Sculpture Challenge [PDF, 355 k]
  Discover the basics of friction with this not-so-slippery activity.
• Gravity Fountain [PDF, 287 k]
  Try this simple activity to wet your appetite for experimenting with water.
• Garbology [PDF, 296 k]
  Recycle your own paper!
• Alligator Habitat [PDF, 254 k]
  Use your creativity to design your own species of fish.
• Lava Flow [PDF, 248 k]
  Make a model showing how a caldera forms.
• Sea Turtles [PDF, 284 k]
  Observe how different factors affect the size of a sea turtle population

• Roller Coaster Design [PDF, 378 k]
  Get out to an amusement park and investigate the wild motions of a roller coaster!
• Bogs [PDF, 505 k]
  Get outside and observe how different materials decompose (or don't!) when buried.
• Baseball [PDF, 243 k]
  Investigate the bounciness of different sports balls in this super sports activity.
• Dinosaurs [PDF, 280 k]
  If you don't have fossilized bones, here's an ativity that provides the same kind of challenge that fossil hunters face: how to identify bones from an animal skeleton.
• California Fish [PDF, 249 k]
  Use your observation skills to identify different kinds of fish mouths in this activity.
• Sailboat Design [PDF, 254 k]
  Here's a fun and simple way to test the effectiveness of different kinds of sails, using a sail car instead of a sailboat!
• Music and Sound [PDF, 274 k]
  Use cardboard tubes or PVC pipes to make an instrument and tune it!.
• Body Electric [PDF, 284 k]
  Find electricity where you might not have expected it--in a lemon!
• Animal Scent [PDF, 284 k]
  Try this fun scent activity with a group of kids!
• Luge [PDF, 229 k]
  Make a marble run!
• Biodiversity [PDF, 273 k]
  Scout zoo animals to determine how their feet help them survive in their environments.
• Doghouse Design [PDF, 255 k]
  Explore how colors of paint affect they way a structure absorbs light energy with this bright activity.
• Cactus [PDF, 249 k]
  Discover how some desert birds keep their cool!
• Earthquakes [PDF, 350 k]
  Use aerial imagery to study the earth's surface.
• Light and Color [PDF, 223 k]
  Make colored shadows to see what mixing light is all about.