HR: 1340h
AN: ED13C-0619
TI: I-LLINI Partnerships for 21st Century Teachers
AU: * Read, K
EM: kread2@gmail.com
AF: University of Illinois Dept. of Geology, 1301 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801,
AU: Wong, K
EM: kjwong8@gmail.com
AF: University of Illinois Dept. of Geology, 1301 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801,
AU: Charlevoix, D J
EM: charlevo@illinois.edu
AF: University of Illinois Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, 105 S. Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801,
AU: Tomkin, J
EM: tomkin@illinois.edu
AF: University of Illinois Dept. of Geology, 1301 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801,
AU: Hug, B
EM: bhug@illinois.edu
AF: University of Illinois College of Education, 1310 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820,
AU: Williams, M
EM: mtwillia@illinois.edu
AF: University of Illinois College of Education, 1310 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820,
AU: Pianfetti, E
EM: esecaras@uiuc.edu
AF: University of Illinois College of Education, 1310 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820,
AB: I-LLINI Partnerships is two-year State funded program to initiate enhance communication between the faculty at University of Illinois and K-12 teachers in the surrounding communities. The program focuses on math and science with a particular emphasis on the use of technology to teaching math and science to middle-school aged children. The Partnership provides participating teachers with a suite of technology including a computer, digital camera, and software, as well as a small stipend. University partners include representatives from the Departments of Mathematics as well as the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Geology. The Atmospheric Sciences and Geology faculty have partnered to provide content using an Earth Systems Science approach to presenting content to the teachers. Additionally, teachers provide feedback to university faculty with relation to how they might better prepare future science teachers. Teacher participants are required to attend a series of workshops during the academic year as well as a summer workshop. The first workshop was held June 2008 on the University of Illinois campus. Our poster will highlight the first workshop providing a discussion and photographs of the activities, an analysis of the benefits and challenges - both to the university representatives as well as the teachers ­ and a summary of future changes planned for the 2009 summer workshop. During the second morning of the workshop, the science teachers participated in an EcoBlitz via a field trip to a collect data from a stream near campus. During the EcoBlitz, math teachers attended tutorial sessions on campus on statistical analysis software. The EcoBliz teachers were provided with instruments and equipment necessary to collect data on the weather conditions and water quality of the stream. Instruments included a temperature probe, turbidity sensor, dissolved oxygen sensor and a hand held weather instrument. Data was recorded with Vernier LabQuest data loggers. The participants also took pictures with the digital cameras provided through the partnership. During the afternoon session, water and air data was analyzed using TinkerPlots. The science teachers helped the math teachers understand the process of data collection, the physical environment where data was collected and the limitations of the instruments. The math teachers helped the science teachers to use the TinkerPlots software and find statistical representations of the data. A group discussion ensued with regard to the meaning of various statistical measures such as average and median and what they really mean when using real data. Feedback from the teachers was overwhelmingly positive, in particular the modeling of using science data to understand mathematical concepts. Several teachers planned to borrow the instruments and conduct similar activities in their science and math classrooms. Future work include conduct workshops for the participating teachers throughout the academic year to solicit from in-service teachers how university level science classes can be better tailored to pre-service teacher needs.
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 0830 Teacher training
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2008 Fall Meeting