The RET Program in the Center for Materials for Information Technology at the University of Alabama
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The RET Program in the Center for Materials for Information Technology at the University of Alabama
David E. Nikles and Garry W. Warren Center for Materials for Information Technology, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0209 ABSTRACT The Center for Materials for Information Technology has a mission of outreach to middle school students. For the past two years our Center has run a summer research experiences for teachers (RET) program. A primary emphasis of the Center’s educational outreach activities involves collaboration with a very innovative 6th to 8th grade Integrated Science (IS) curriculum based in the Center for Communication and Educational Technology at the University of Alabama. Each summer three teachers from the IS program spent ten weeks working in the Center to develop demonstrations or activities for use in their classrooms. The emphasis was on demonstrations of magnetism and magnetic materials. In addition to these activities, the teachers have also assisted in the development of Computer Aided Instructional (CAI) software for use in their science classrooms. Both the activities and the software developed this summer will be made available to all of the teachers and students participating in the IS curriculum, approximately 1400 teachers and 170,000 students.
THE RET PROGRAM The Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program is a partnership between the Center for Material for Information Technology (the Center) and the Integrated Science Program (IS Program). The Center is a NSF Materials Research Science Engineering Center (MRSEC). The Center pursues basic research in materials and processes used in digital data storage. One of its missions is outreach to middle school students. The IS Program is run by the Center for Communication and Educational Technology (CCET) at the University of Alabama. This is middle school science curriculum that provides classroom telecasts, hundreds of hands-on activities and student books that relate to real life. They also provide performance-based assessment strategies and summer training workshops for teachers. The program involves over 1400 enrolled teachers in 15 states and Québec, Canada. It currently serves more than 160,000 middle school students. A description on the Integrated Science Program can be found on its web page.* The IS curriculum is different from the usual middle school curriculum where students have separate, independent courses on life science, earth science and physical science. Instead the IS curriculum integrates four concepts across the 6th, 7th and 8th grade curriculum. Table I is adopted from the IS Program web page. Guided by the integrated concepts, the students study life sciences, earth science and physical science. However, they cover all three subjects each year, with a different theme each year. *
http://www.ccet.ua.edu/ishome.htm
GG2.2.1
Table I. Overview of the Integrated Science Curriculum* 6th Grade observations provide clues
Themes 7th Grade form and function are relevant
8th Grade waves have propert
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