Resource for Science Education Program Update

Compiled by Umesh Thakkar

The Resource for Science Education (RSE) Program, funded by NSF, has been gaining support and encouragement from the university and K-12 community (see access, Summer 1995). Members of the program include Scott Lathrop, Lisa Bievenue, and David Curtis.

The main objectives for the program are to (a) invite educators (students, teachers, and faculty) to form collaborations with NCSA/UIUC scientists and staff; (b) build bridges between research and classroom learning and teaching; and (c) empower teachers to improve their practice by integrating new information technologies into classroom activities.

Fall Outreach
Fall 1995 activities in science education and new technologies outreach were as follows:

• RSE hosted Suzanne Damarin, professor of education at Ohio State University, whose interests are in virtual reality and mathematics education. Yasumasa Kanada, professor of information science at University of Tokyo, lectured on "Pi Calculation -- Pushing the Limits of Number Crunching Machines" to the university and K-12 education community. Kanada's visit was co-hosted by Georgette Moore from the Yankee Ridge Elementary School, Urbana, IL.

• Program teachers from Yankee Ridge Elementary School, Urbana Middle School, and Urbana High School recently received funding from the Illinois State Board of Education for further development of online projects in pi mathematics, groundwater quality, and stock market activity that they started last summer. As one example the funding will support integration of geographical information systems (GIS) tools and data into Urbana Middle School's groundwater project.

• RSE was showcased at the Supercomputing '95 K-12 education poster session, and RSE teachers from Illinois, Nebraska, and Virginia shared their summer experiences (see access, Fall 1995) with other educators in panel and poster sessions.

• RSE staff assisted David Curtis, project director of NCSA's recently released Web site "Science for the Millenium" (see access, Fall 1995), in a preliminary evaluation of online science exhibits in astronomy and astrophysics by two groups of local high school teachers and students. A Science Expo was presented in the Education Program at Supercomputing '95 as part of a panel on "New Trends in Supercom-puting for Classroom Use and Assessment." More than 70 educators signed up after the panel to further their interests in exploring how the Expo could be utilized in their classroom science activities. The panel presentation is accessible from the RSE Home Page.

New program participants
In addition to several NCSA scientists and staff who have been interacting with RSE teachers since last summer, three UIUC faculty and staff members recently became involved with the program. They are as follows:

• Steven Hall, project director for UIUC Collaborative Visualization (CoVis), has begun collaborating with local RSE-affiliated elementary teachers who are interested in weather. These teachers use CoVis resources, such as the UIUC CoVis Geosciences Web Server and the Weather Visualizer, in their online weather curriculum projects.

• Alfred Hubler, professor of physics and research scientist at the Center for Complex Systems Research, is utilizing CyberProf in Urbana High School's advanced physics classroom. An intelligent student-teacher interface that facilitates grading, creating, and presenting educational course materials, CyberProf was developed by Hubler's research group.

• Elisabeth Oltheten, professor of finance in the College of Commerce and Business Administration, is integrating the University of Illinois Securities Exchange Simulation (UISES) into stock market projects for middle and high school classrooms. UISES, an investment simulation, was designed by Oltheten and her colleague, Antoinette Tessmer.

The RSE Program welcomes the involvement of interested educators and scientists at all levels.

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