TEACHERS TRAINING FOR HANDS-ON-UNIVERSE

July 8 - 12, 2002

SCSU funded one middle school teacher and one high school teacher from South Carolina to attend a training workshop at WKU for certification in the Hands-on-Universe (HOU) program. HOU is a program developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science, at the University of California at Berkeley with funding from NSF and other government agencies. HOU uses the subject of astronomy to teach students the tools and concepts of math, science and technology. Students request astronomical observations from an automated telescope, and once the observations are made, the data is downloaded to the student computer and analyzed using software provided by HOU.

Schools who wish to participate send teachers to an intensive one-week workshop. The teachers are given an overview of the field of astronomy as well as hands-on experience in making their own observations and using the HOU software to reduce and analyze the data. Teachers who attend the training also receive curriculum materials for use in the classroom that conform to the national science standards. The teachers receive a stipend and graduate course credit from the University of California at Berkeley and are expected to implement the HOU training into the classroom.

The CNRT at SCSU provided travel funds for Ms. Alene Wilkins from DuBose Middle School in Summerville, SC and Ms. Tonya Lee from White Knoll High School in Lexington, SC. In addition to providing funds for travel, the physics and astronomy faculty at SCSU will provide technical support during the teachers' implementation of the program in their classrooms.

FUNDED BY: NASA's Minority University Space Interdisciplinary Network (MU-SPIN) under Cooperative Agreement NCC 5-534 to South Carolina State University (SCSU) funded two South Carolina teachers