Teachers learn the Net via RSE

by Christie Mason

Do you know how the number pi (3.14 . . .) came to be? You would if you were
in the classrooms of Betty Ganas or Georgette Moore, two Illinois teachers
who participated in NCSA's Resource for Science Education (RSE) Program last
July.

For instance you would learn that in 1897 a doctor from Indiana tried to get
the so-called irrational number legally changed to 3.0 for simplicity's
sake. What's more you would be excited about knowing it because you would
feel your teacher's excitement about something as ordinary as pi. "It's an
opportunity to look at math as more than a bit of information for a
formula," Moore says.

Integrating the Web

Nineteen teachers ranging from elementary to high school, who share Moore's
enthusiasm for Web-based learning, responded to an online call to
participate in the Resource for Science Education Program for four weeks
last summer. They came together at NCSA to discover how to integrate
educational tools of the World Wide Web into their classrooms and schools.
Teachers, including four from outside Illinois, developed their own
curricula by using existing Web pages in conjunction with ones they created.
"Pi in Mathematics," created and assembled by elementary teachers Moore
(Urbana, IL) and Ganas (Lombard, IL), is one of those projects. Another, by
middle school educators Jim Peterson (techonology coordinator for the Urbana
schools) and Dawn Novak (Champaign, IL), deals with learning about the stock
market on the Web.

"We wanted to get kids interested in thinking about and saving for their
future, so we decided to do a stock market project," Peterson explains.

Involving others

One of Novak and Peterson's goals -- and of the RSE Program in general --
was to produce a Web curriculum that met with national and state standards
for education. Another goal was to create a resource that could be
integrated into all subject areas.

"It [the stock market exhibit] helps them learn about math, which is great;
but it also works with other areas like social studies, history, and
English," Peterson says. Teachers in the program are excited about the
possibilities for integrating the World Wide Web into their classrooms and
into the curricula of their schools.

"I think it's important to go back and involve other teachers in Web-based
learning," states Elaine Westbrook, a high school science teacher from
Omaha, NE, and RSE participant. "I'll be able to use what I have learned
here and have the confidence to expand it."

Westbrook's project partner, Dave Stone (Urbana, IL) agreed: "I have a much
better foundation for integrating the Web into my classroom." The projects
designed by the teachers are meant to be used not just in their classrooms,
but by all the teachers in their schools. Anyone who accesses the RSE
participants' projects on the Web is free to use them as well.

In addition to creating Web-based curricula, teachers attending the RSE
Program heard speakers daily and discussed readings related to the
integration of Web resources into their curricula.

"All of the readings gave us much to think about in developing our project,"
says Urbana Middle School's computer coordinator, Pam Van Walleghen. "As a
result, we tried very hard to create activities that would engage our
students in the 'real' world. We tried to develop activities that were
gender friendly and thought carefully about standards as we developed. We
found the readings to be very useful."

Van Walleghen also found the presentations to be useful, as did her middle
school colleague, Peterson. For example, "I can use what one speaker
explained in my computer class to show the relationship between
supercomputers in one area of the country and the data from another part of
the country that the supercomputers are processing," Peterson says of one
presentation. "It actually shows the power of the Internet and its
possibilities for the future."

Empowering teachers

The ability to demonstrate opportunities offered by the Internet and its
possibilities for the future is what the RSE Program intended to give its
participants.

"We've committed ourselves to empowering teachers," says RSE program
coordinator Umesh Thakkar. "The RSE summer program created a relationship
between school classrooms and NCSA scientists. In so doing, RSE truly became
a resource for science education."

"The RSE summer program has been excellent," Van Walleghen adds. "We need
the exposure to ideas and resources that the presentations and readings
provided. We need to know what is going on outside our classrooms. We need
the time to collaborate and develop. This is the best program I have ever
been involved in at NCSA." World Wide Web-based learning is becoming more
and more of a reality, thanks to the teachers who participated in the RSE
Program, the RSE staff, and NCSA/UIUC speakers who helped participants
explore the possibilities of the Web in education.

As some students hook up to the Internet across the country this fall, they
will benefit from what their teachers did this summer at NCSA -- including
the discovery of how pi came to be.

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