Today is lesson plan day. The teachers seem to be working well. I am really getting interested to see what aquatics comes up with for their river model. This weekend I will collect minnows for their tank and bring in dechlorinator and some bacteria supplement. Once they finish building the model they will add the fish and plants to the kit. Then they will use it test their pH and dissolved oxygen probes. They will also use my PASCO probes to check the accuracy of the UNT probes.
I am still working on my presentation. This weeked I will have to go to school and pull some activiites for my talk. Not sure how many teachers will be there. It will be interesting. I did find some activities I had left over from CAST last fall so I don't have to make that many copies.
Thursday, June 21
Today we clarified the requirments for the research paper/report, the power point, poster and demonstration. I think teachers felt a little better about what the needed to do after talking to Dr. Acevedo. One thing he said that I found interesting was that interested teachers could get help if they wanted to submit their paper for publication. I think that this would really be helpful for teachers.
I am getting ready for my presentation in Austin next week. I was going through the "Green" electric circuit kits and realized that there are a lot of projects that have to do with water. I think that I could use the kits this fall during our water properties and water issues unit. I think the students would be really interested in building the projects and it is a way to talk about resource concervation.
I think I could introduce engineering on the first day. That is when we hand out the class rules and the first day letter. It is a long boring day for teachers and students. I think I will put students in groups of four and then after the first day "stuff" we will have "discovery time" and I will set out the electronic kits for them to look at. Then we get to the water properties we can use them to explore ways you can use water.
Wednesday, June 20th
Wednesday, was a slow day. Teachers worked in the lab in the morning and then at the library to learn more about literary research. While we were at the library training, it became apparent that teachers did not realize that they were expected to write a research paper. RET wants them to get the research experience, that data is used by the professors but the paper is published. However, if the teacher was interested in being published UNT would be willing to work them so that they could submit a paper to a educational or scientific journal.
Tuesday, June 19th
The collaborative between UNT and teachers is very interesting. Teachers come in not knowing what to expect and then are assigned a project with a university professor. The university professor sometime has unrealistic expectations of the teachers skills set. The UNT project is general so that teachers can have input into its development.
Projects like RET are trying to bridge the gap between high school and the university level. Teachers need to be able to take what they learn at the university level and then implement it in a a way that is applicable to high school. For example, our robotics teachers understand the basics of robotics but coding is not one of their skill sets. There professor expected them to be able to code. It wasn't a major issue but everyone had to take a step back and re-evaluate how best to implement the project. The professor and engineering graduate students has to adjust their view of the project so that the expectations were realistic for the the teachers.
Expectations at the secondary science level are different than they are at the university level. However with the increase in STEM training I think that the gap is narrowing. I teach a fourth year science that includes honor students and AT-RISK students. It is sometimes a challenge to keep both groups engaged and working.
I do think that the more teachers work with researchers at the university level they better able they are to prepare their students for college.
Today, had a workshop using LABview. I was not looking forward to it because the one I attended last year was not very helpful. However, this time they did a much better job at the presentation. I had a lot more help from the instructor when I got stuck and I found out about some new lessons they are developing for high school. One of the lessons I was interested in was a wave tank lesson. You can measure wave length, and height. I thought it might be interesting to have students develop an oil rig and then test it in the wave tank to see if it could withstand large waves. That would go with our unit in oceanography and especially oceanographic engineering. I volunteered to be a lesson plan tester. They also said that they paid around $200 to teachers for developing a lesson plan they could place on their web site.
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| National Instruments LabView training session |
This is another advantage of RET you get to network with lots of different people. I really hope I can work with national instruments to develop the wave tank lesson plan.
Monday, June 18th
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