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San Antonio PER Workshop - June 19-21, 2002
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As part of the VaNTH ERC Education outreach initiative, a K-12 workshop was held in San Antonio for middle and high school teachers by PER principal investigator Tony Petrosino of UT-Austin and workshop leader Stacy Klein of Vanderbilt University. The workshop leaders were assisted by Sally Valenzuela, Associate Director for the San Antonio USI, and Richard Vath, a graduate research assistant from UT-Austin. The workshop was offered for K-12 mathematics and science teachers involved with the San Antonio USI (USI-9554484) in an effort to present them with instructional materials that use bioengineering and related sciences as anchors and challenges for the teaching of science fundamentals at various levels in K-12. |
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Over the course of the two and a half day workshop, the teachers were exposed to an overview of the VaNTH ERC project, an overview of the LEGACY cycle framework, and an in-depth look at two LEGACY mosaics on the Electrocardiogram and Medical Imaging. These two instructional units were developed by Stacy Klein with the help of additional high school classroom teachers as part of the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program of the VaNTH ERC project. These mosaics have been extensively tested on the high school level. |
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Throughout the workshop, teachers were given a first-hand look at the modules by working through many of the incorporated lab activities. Since many of the teachers in attendance taught on the middle school level, these first-hand experiences were especially valuable because the teachers were able to look critically at the modules to determine what components could be changed or adapted for use in middle school mathematics and science. By the conclusion of the workshop, several of the teachers had begun to develop instructional sequences for use in their own mathematics and science classrooms in the fall based on the mosaics presented by Dr. Klein. |
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In the coming year, our hope is that we can continue to collaborate with these teachers and others in the Austin Independent School District to redesign activities and modules based on bioengineering to be implemented by NSF supported outreach programs (San Antonio USI) and NSF supported preservice teacher training program (UTeach). |