Summer Science Programs

Now is the time of year to be thinking of summer science programs for teachers as well as students. I have gathered a sample of programs that are available.

PAN Free Residential Summer Program
The Physics of Atomic Nuclei (PAN) free residential summer program for science teachers and high school students is now accepting applications for summer 2012. PAN participants will learn about scientific research in nuclear astrophysics at National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and conduct their own experiments. Teachers can earn continuing education credit for this program. The teacher program will run from July 30 – August 3, and students will follow from August 6-10. Applications are due by April 30. Learn more and online application. http://www.nscl.msu.edu/teachersstudents/programs/pan

Free Summer Programs at Perimeter Institute
Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), is accepting applications for free summer science camps for students and teachers with a keen interest in modern physics. All expenses are paid for those applying within Canada. For detailed information regarding these camps, please visit http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?lang=en
The International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP)
July 12 – July 28, 2012
Application Deadline: March 31, 2012
EinsteinPlus Workshop for Teachers
July 8 – July 14, 2012
Application Deadline: May 2, 2012
A Sizzling Summer of STEM Camps at Northern Illinois University
NIU offers a variety of day and residential summer camps for students entering grades 1 through 12. From the STEM Outreach camps that offer everything from the science of roller coasters, art, or the environment to NIU’s camps in game design, creative writing, and film, there’s sure to be something of interest for every young learner.
Engineering Amusement: From Roller Coasters to Cotton Candy for campers entering grades 5-8. June 17-22.
Camp Invention (Day Camp) for campers entering grades 1-6. June 24-29.
Exploring Nature: Habitats and the Environment for campers entering grades 7-9. July 8-15.
Exploring Science through Art for campers entering grades 7-9. July 8-15.
Environment and Sustainability for campers entering grades 9-12. June 24-29.
Learn more about camps from STEM Outreach and other STEM departments and find out how to register
at http://www.niu.edu/stem/camps/index.shtml

For more information on applying to the residential camps, contact Mark Pietrowski, College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences External Programming at
(815) 753-1456 or pietrowski@niu.edu.
Destination Science

Home

Crazy Coaster Science & Sea-fari Park – All new for 2012.
Rocket Powered Mars Expedition – All new for 2012.
Robo Dragon Extreme Techno Challenge – All new for 2012.
Wild Extreme Physics Fun – Back by popular demand.
Leaders in Training – For Grades 7th to 11th (entering next fall).

The National Youth Science Camp is a residential science education program for young scientists the summer after they graduate from high school.

http://www.nysf.com/w/programs/nysc/

Sally Ride Science Camps

http://www.sallyridecamps.com/

NASA offers several programs.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/programs/index.html

University of Rochester offerings:

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=339

The Empire State STEM Learning Network lists programs available during school breaks.

http://www.empirestem-fl.org/students/School-Break-Camps

The Johns Hopkins University  Center for Talented Youth offers a list of programs.  I did a spot check and the list seems to be current.

http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/linka4.htm#mediaartstech

Summer Camps & Summer Programs for Students at Colleges in NY State for Kids and Teams 8 -18+ is a searchable list.

http://www.summeroncampus.com/main/SuperSearch.asp

Change in Location

My blog, Pat’s Picks for STEM Educators. has moved  to WordPress.com.  Please draw my attention to any problems you may encounter.

The Internet Scout Report

The Internet Scout Project

“Since 1994, the Scout Project has focused on developing better tools and services for finding, filtering, and presenting online information and metadata.

Located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus, and part of the University’s College of Letters and Sciences, Scout has access to highly educated content specialists and a world-class array of computer science and library resources. Our eclectic staff blends academics and professionals from Library Science and Computer Science, along with graduate and undergraduate students studying the sciences, social sciences and humanities.”

One can sign up for a weekly electronic alert service. To create an account, go to:  http://scout.wisc.edu/index.php

If you already subscribe, but,  like me, you fell behind in reading it over the summer, I have selected some of the sites listed over the summer.

Volume 17, Number 33 August 19, 2011

STEMNET (UK)http://stemnet.org.uk/

Centre for Effective Learning in Science (UK)http://www.ntu.ac.uk/cels/

Volume 17, Number 32 August 12, 2011

Sing About Science and Math

http://www.singaboutscience.org/

Virtual Nerd

http://www.virtualnerd.com/for-educators.php

Public Library of Science ONE

http://www.plosone.org/home.action

Teaching Every Student

http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/

Making Learning Real with Problem Based Case Learning

http://www.makinglearningreal.org/index.html 

Volume 17, Number 31 August 5, 2011

Multi-Cultural Teaching:  Information and Strategies  (U. of Michigan)

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsmdt.php 

Volume 17, Number 30 July 29, 2011MESSENGER (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory )MESSENGER = MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging

http://www.messenger-education.org/main/epo.php

Neuroscience Education Resources  NERVE Encycloportal

http://www.ndgo.net/sfn/nerve/

Natural History Museum UK includes games

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/index.html 

Volume 17, Number 29 July 22, 2011

National Weather Service Weather Education

http://www.weather.gov/om/edures.shtml

National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science

http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/

Volume 17, Number 28 July 15, 2011

Advanced Lab Teaching Resources Physics and Astronomy  (Haverford College)http://www.haverford.edu/physics/Amador/AdvancedLabTeachingResources.php

National Center for Blind Youth in Science

http://www.blindscience.org/ncbys/default.asp?SnID=1019172110

STEMcareer

http://stemcareer.com/

Financial Education in the Math Classroom (Drexel Univ.)

http://mathforum.org/fe/ 

Volume 17, Number 27 July 8, 2011

National Institute for General Medical Science

 http://www.nigms.nih.gov/

Women@NASA

http://women.nasa.gov/

Science Classroom Safety

As you gear up for the current school year, you may find some of these materials useful.

This material is provided by NSTA for your use in the classroom and may be given to students at the beginning of the school year to help them understand their role in ensuring a safe and productive science experience.

 “Safety in the Science Classroom”

http://www.nsta.org/pdfs/SafetyInTheScienceClassroom.pdf

 A Baker’s Dozen Safety Rules (Plus 1)

http://carnegiescience.edu/first_light_case/horn/labsafety.html

 Education Bureau of the Hong Kong special administrative region  –materials for all ages

http://www.edb.gov.hk/index.aspx?nodeid=3376&langno=1

Chemical Management  Resource Guide for School Administrators (EPA)http://www.epa.gov/oppt/pubs/chemmgmt/resourceguide.pdf

Suggested Activities for Laboratory Safety for Middle / Secondary

http://www.seven-oaks.net/ScienceEd2/uploads/d1_all_activities.pdf 

Laboratory Safety

http://www.csun.edu/science/ref/laboratory/safety/safety.html 

More e-textbooks

Below is an additional comment about e-textbooks.  It was posted to PHYS-L by James Deane, who teaches at the Ottawa, Kansas high school.  Jim gave me permission to share his comments. 

 “I have collected several online textbooks to ‘give’ to my students
over the years, but they are all free.  Some are better for high
school students, some better for college, some better for teachers.

I haven’t used any of them as a primary text, but then I have
plentiful decent textbooks

Motion Mountain:  http://www.motionmountain.net/
Light and Matter:  http://www.lightandmatter.com/
Discover Physics:  http://www.lightandmatter.com/area1dp.html
Newtonian Physics:  http://www.lightandmatter.com/area1book1.html
Physics Hypertextbook:  http://physics.info/
Spiral Physics:  http://web.monroecc.edu/spiral/
Stargazers to Starships:  http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Sintro.htm

Jim”

—
— — —– ——- ———–
James K. Deane
jim.deane@gmail.com
— ——- – ——– — ——–

On-line Grad Level Courses

Are you looking for credits to complete your certification?  This post is a summary of a discussion that took place on OPHUN-L, a listserv for physics teachers.

American Museum of Natural History

http://www.amnh.org/learn/

University of Virgina

http://k12.phys.virginia.edu/online-courses.html

North Carolina State (Matter and Interactions)

http://www.ncsu.edu/per/mipub.html

http://matterandinteractions.org/Content/HSteachers/teachers.html

For actually learning physics content nothing beats hands-on, student centered, discourse-intensive  experiences for physics teachers led by master teachers, so do consider a summer modeling course as well:

Arizona State U. 

 http://modeling.asu.edu/MW_nation.html

Buffalo State

http://www.buffalostate.edu/physics/x711.xml

SUNY Learning Network

http://catalog.sln.suny.edu/index.php

Multiple universities (including Montana State — highly recommended by others)

http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/online_courses/

Electronic Textbooks

E-textbooks have been on my mind for a while.  I was pleased to discover that Brian Simboli, science librarian at Lehigh University, has written an excellent blog entry on e-textbooks.  Brian describes the various models of delivering e-textbooks and links to reports and studies relevant to the topic.

http://library.lehigh.edu/sagespages/?p=247#comments

 The Internet Archive offers an advanced search feature that allows you to limit your search for digitized texts by many factors.

http://www.archive.org/

A subject search on physics in open library finds 7,237 digitized books.  They are listed by subject matter, for example:  solid state physics, cloud physics, physics in fiction, plasma physics.

http://openlibrary.org/search/subjects?q=physics&search=

The e-books directory offers quite a few books in the sciences.

http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/

This is not a complete list, by any means.  No, I have not investigated each title.  My purpose is to bring to your attention some sources for electronic books.  My hope is that some of you will find some of  them useful.  One word of caution.  It can be a little frustrating searching these collections.  Not all of the items digitized are available for free in their entirety. At the very least, one has access to a complete citation and an abstract.

Careers in Science

Science students will sometimes ask:  “What does a scientist do?”.  Many of the professional societies offer informtation about careers in their specialty.  I have used Connotea, a free service of The Nature Publishing Group, to collect links to those pages.  If a students asks you what a physicist, or biologist, or geologist does, go to this page.

http://www.connotea.org/user/pviele/tag/careers

I checked for broken links on February 8th, 2011.

You can sort my Connotea collection on any of the keywords on the left side of the screen.  The collection is currently sorted on careers.

Good Books for Science Students

Certain questions seem to arise periodically.  Requests for recommendations for good reading for science students falls into that category.  There are a few lists online that could be of use.  Those are listed below. 

In addition, it would be nice to collect recommended titles in one place.  If you will send titles of books that you find especially suitable for students, I will create a virtual library and share it.  You can leave comments on the blog, or contact me directly at ptv1@cornell.edu

Last, but not least, I suggest that you work with your local librarian to find suitable materials.

NSTA Recommends is your best source for thoughtful, objective recommendations of science-teaching materials. Our panel of reviewers—top-flight teachers and other outstanding science educators—has determined that the products recommended here are among the best available supplements for science teaching. In the section called outstanding science trade books, you can limit by age level and format.  There are 95 book titles in the list.http://www.nsta.org/recommends/

Science NetLinks is part of Thinkfinity, a partnership between the Verizon Foundation and 11 premier educational organizations. The Thinkfinity partners include the AAAS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Council on Economic Education, the National Geographic Society, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the Literacy Network.  Here is the link to the  Science NetLinks suggested reading list.

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/summer/booklists.php

Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page offers a list of books broken down by age groups.

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/science_sleuths.htm#advanced

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburg offers a service that break down by discipline suitable science and  technology books for young adults.

http://www.carnegielibrary.org/teens/stem/showbooklist.cfm?catid=6&list=STEM_chemistry

Evaluating Information

The ability to evaluate information is a critical skill to have.  There are several helpful web sites out there.

 Kathy Scrock’s web page “Brush Up on Internet Skills”  offers four lesson plans, including one on evalatuation. 

FactCheckEd.org is an educational resource for high school teachers and students. It’s  designed to help students learn to cut through the fog of misinformation and deception that surrounds the many messages they’re bombarded with every day. Our site is a sister to the award-winning Annenberg Political Fact Check, which goes by the Internet address FactCheck.org. and monitors the factual accuracy of what is said in the nation’s political arena.

Both websites are projects of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, with funding for FactCheckEd.org provided by a grant from the Flora Family Foundation.

QUICK, The Quality Information Checklist.

The Internet Detective:  Wise up to the Web is an excellent tutorial.

http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/