Ifat Zimmerman

Ifat Zimmerman

Ifat is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Education in Science & Technology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Her Ph.D. research, under the supervision of Professor Tali Tal and Professor Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, focuses on the role of science news websites as mediators between science and the public in communicating scientific content.

She obtained her M.Sc in Science Education from the Technion, the Faculty of Education in Science & Technology. Her thesis research topic under the supervision of Dr. Luli Stern: “Using a Novel Protocol for the Development of Assessment Tasks that Diagnose Understanding of Biological Evolution”.

She has a BSc. in Nutrition and a teaching certificate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Faculty of Agriculture Food and Environment.

Ifat’s paper Science Communication Objectives and Practices of Science News Websites presented at the Mark Biano ‘Metaksherim’ (Communicating) Graduate Student Conference in Communication was selected by the judges first of all submissions (2021, December).

יפעת צימרמן
כנס מתקשרים 2021, החוג לתקשורת אוניברסיטת חיפה

Presentations:

Zimmerman, I., Ginosar, A. & Tal, T. (2021, April). Science News Websites: Making Science Accessible for All. Paper presented at the 94^th  NARST Online Annual International Conference.

Zimmerman, I., Tal, T. & Baram-Tsabari, A. (2021, December 5). Science Communication Objectives and Practices of Science News Websites. Paper presented at the 18^th  Mark Biano ‘Metaksherim’ (Communicating) Graduate Student Conference in Communication. Haifa University, Israel.

Zimmerman, I., Tal, T. & Baram-Tsabari, A. (2021, December 12). Science Communication Objectives and Practices of Science News Websites. Poster presented at the Research Day of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology of the Technion, Israel.

Dalit Lan

Dalit Lan is a doctoral student under the joint guidance of Associate Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari from the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology and Dr. Sagi Dalyot from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, and a member of the TCSS (Taking Citizen Science to School) research center.

Dalit’s Ph.D. research addresses citizen science as a promoter of geographic literacy at school. She leads the integration of the citizen project “Landmarks for Accessible (Built) Environment” in schools. This project promotes geographic literacy, spatial thinking, and active citizenship in participating students, as they map urban areas and support calculation of optimal walking paths for visually impaired people.  Dalit also researches how relevant geographic literacy is for day-to-day decision-making. In the research, “The Geography of COVID-19”, she studies students’ and adults’ interpretations of COVID-related geographical information.

Dalit teaches geography at middle school and high school levels, and is a teacher educator at the Department of Geography at Oranim College. She has co-authored geography curricula for grades 5-9 for the Israel Ministry of Education.

Dalit received her B.A. and M.A. from the Department of Geography at the University of Haifa. Dalit’s M.A. research project, supervised by Prof. Arnon Soffer, dealt with groundwater as part of the peace agreements between Israel and Jordan and Israel and the Palestinians. Together with Prof. Soffer, Dalit co-authored a high school geography textbook entitled “Geography of the Middle East: Changes towards the 21st Century”.

Public functions and Publications

Recent conferences

Osnat Atias, Ph.D. Student

I’m a PhD student jointly supervised by Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari from the Technion, and Prof. Yael Kali from the University of Haifa. My research focuses on citizen science, a broad field of practice in which anyone can actively take part in scientific research and help advance science in various disciplinary domains. As a form of public engagement with science, citizen science bridges between science and non-scientists and supports the democratization of scientific data and knowledge. 

My curiosity towards citizen science sparked as I started my doctoral studies in the Taking Citizen Science to Schools research center. Following my experience as a bioinformatics researcher, as well as a science teacher in schools, I was keen to integrate these two areas of interest and explore how citizen science can enhance both science education as well as scientific research efforts. 

My research about citizen science in schools focuses on cases where schools and scientists form partnerships around citizen science projects, involving students in authentic, academia-level scientific research as part of their school curricula. Such partnerships challenge both schools and scientists as they interact across cultural boundaries and engage in activities outside of their usual domain of practice. I examine the relationships that are formed between the different partners – teachers, students and scientists – and the kinds of learning that occur within each of these participant groups.

Here is a list of my publications. 

Projects

Building Mutualistic Partnerships Between Schools and Scientists

Relationships in Scientist-Teacher Partnerships Built Around Citizen Science Projects