![at home collection teaser for howtosmile.org](/sites/default/files/styles/250_width/public/2022-04/new_at-home-smile-teaser_v4.jpg?itok=NK6iMQZF)
Project overview
This Children's Creativity Museum, in partnership the Lawrence Hall of Science at University of California, Berkeley, and a cohort of museums from the NISE Network, updated, refreshed, and retooled existing digital infrastructure to meet the needs of informal educators offering at-home STEM educational programming during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The project brought together over a dozen museums across the U.S to expand the Howtosmile digital library, which provides high-quality STEM activities to an active community of informal educators through best practices in digital resource management-with almost 3,500 cataloged resources. The project also updated the digital Library's legacy cataloging system to reduce complexity and increase security.
![howtosmile logo](/sites/default/files/styles/250_width/public/images/catalog/howtosmile_logo_template_vertical_2016.png?itok=U6vT5WtV)
This new network of museums documented their shared practices with a new At-Home Activities Framework focused on learning at home. The framework is a list of recommended activity criteria, including accessible guides, low-cost materials, caregiver support, relevance, and creativity, informed by exemplars, established design principles, and educational research. Partner museums used the framework was used to revise their own content and curate a new collection on howtosmile that showcases the best hands-on STEAM activities for learners at home.
![howtosmile at-home activities collection teaser](/sites/default/files/styles/250_width/public/2022-04/new-art-border-hero_image_700x400.jpg?itok=TGJ6kbxl)
Visit the Howtosmile At-Home Activities Collection
![howtosmile framework teaser](/sites/default/files/styles/250_width/public/2022-04/framework_teaser.jpg?itok=JdIZ2bc0)
Download the Howtosmile At-Home Activities Framework
Acknowledgement:
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services #CAGML-246996-OMLS-20.