NES/OSA Education Outreach Summary 2002-03
Education Committee Chairman: Malcolm Chamberlain Project PHOTON
Throughout this year we continued our support of an email mentoring forum for teachers, set up by Project PHOTON (see 2001-02 summary). This forum is not quite as busy as when PHOTON was actually running but is still active enough to warrant continued support. Project PHOTON2
- This new expanded (nationwide) version of PHOTON is now funded and is expected to begin in Fall 2003. We have sent NEBHE a letter of intent to provide support similar to what we provided for PHOTON.
- All of our current PHOTON mentors, and other interested members are invited to continue as mentors for PHOTON2.
- We have two members on the National Advisory Council for PHOTON2.
Massachusetts State Science Fairs May 2003
We donated $750 for one $500 and one $250 award, and a further $250 toward operating expenses at the high school fair at MIT. For the middle school fair at WPI we donated $1000 for prize money. This was the whole prize money budget for this event. The organizers were very grateful for this donation since this year was particularly difficult for fundraising. This total was partly offset by a $1000 activity grant from OSA. Friday May 2, 2003
John Crawford and Darlene Ford spent the afternoon with the suitcase lecture kit demonstrating optical phenomena at the high school Massachusetts State Science Fair at MIT. Apart from a few logistic and regulatory hitches this was a great success. Saturday May 31, 2003
Marc Daigle presented a similar demo at the middle school Massachusetts State Science Fair at its new venue in Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This went off without a hitch and was well received. We now have a permanent place at these fairs if we want it. See OPN, August 2003 for a more detailed acount.
Future plans
For 2003-4 we are hoping to build on this momentum but for that we'll need more trained volunteers to take out the suitcase lecture kit for demonstrations.
Each year, both series of fairs also need judges; there is a place for individual volunteers to register on their web site. This web site is updated for judge recruiting, scheduling etc. shortly before the start of each Science Fair season.
We are also looking into expanding our reach, perhaps more locally with the regional fairs, and to other New England states. After all, we are the New England Section but so far have only supported Massachusetts educational events. To expand this effort to other states we'll need the active participation of our members in those states. Please contact us if you can help.
Splash weekend, MIT
Sunday 24 November 2002
Mark Kahan and Darlene Ford taught a 4-hour course on optics and photonics as part of the annual MIT Splash weekend program. This was a great success and was reported earlier in the December 2002 edition of Focal Point. Education e-mail list
We now have a mailing list hosted by Lambda Research to facilitate discussions of education programs. Information about this list, including how to subscribe, can be found here. If you're at all interested in helping with our education outreach, check it out and join us. NES/OSA Education Outreach 2001-02
Education Committee Chairman: Malcolm Chamberlain Massachusetts State Science Fair
We contributed to the Mass. Science Fair at MIT in early May, 2002.
- We donated $750 for one $500 and one $250 award, and a further $250 toward operating expenses. This total was partly offset by a $500 activity grant from OSA.
- We also provided a demo of various optics phenomena with the "Optics Suitcase". This was headed up by Marc Daigle, with help from four others. This was well received by the kids even though we didn't see many teachers.
This event was the final of a series of regional science fairs around the state at the high school level. The same organization also runs an equivalent series at the middle school level. The high school final is at MIT in early May, the middle school final is usually at Worcester State College in early June. For 2003 we plan to be involved in both; in fact it could be argued that the middle school event might be more important for us as we'd get the kids interested earlier.
We got into it rather hastily this year and did not have time to properly consider all of the suggestions made by our membership. Starting earlier, with a more deliberate approach, we should be able to do an even better job next time. Our involvement was however, well received by the organizers and we'll be welcome back next year.
Both series of fairs also need judges; there is a place for individual volunteers to register on their web site. This web site will be updated for judge recruiting, scheduling etc. for the 2003 series, sometime later in 2002.
Project PHOTON
Project PHOTON was an initiative of the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) . The purpose was to train New England middle-school, secondary-school and postsecondary educators and career counselors to introduce photonics education into the classroom. The project was funded by a grant from the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
We provided a number of volunteers to an e-mail listserve to answer questions from teachers who'd been through a workshop to prepare them to introduce photonics into their school curriculum. Formal funding etc. for PHOTON may have ended but so long as the listserve stays up we can continue to provide support. This costs us nothing. Our members have made a considerable contribution toward clearing up a number of misconceptions among some teachers. They're trying to teach stuff which didn't exist when they were trained and need this kind of back-up.
Project PHOTON II
- NEBHE is submitting a proposal to NSF for a new expanded version of PHOTON. We have sent them a letter of intent to provide similar support to this program.
- This new project is expected to begin in Fall 2003.
- All of our current PHOTON mentors, and other interested/qualified
members are invited to continue as mentors for PHOTON II.
RE-SEED
The spelled-out title of this program is fairly self-explanatory: Retirees Enhancing Science Education through Experiments & Demonstrations. This is an national program, started in this area from Northeastern University, and now also being implemented in Sweden. NES/OSA is not involved as an organization but would like to encourage retired members to consider joining.
One of our members (Henry Minden) has been involved in this program for some time, on his own initiative, and tells us he found it to be quite a positive experience. If you're interested in getting involved, he would be happy to provide more information.
Reference:
Another summary of our recent education activities appears in OSA's Focal Point newsletter for June 2002.
