Collaborative Research: Developing a Distance Learning Course for High School Geoscience Teachers

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Collaborative Research: Developing a Distance Learning Course for High School Geoscience TeachersThe Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at the University of Washington in Seattle are collaborating to establish an inquiry-based distance learning professional development course for high school science teachers that teaches Earth System Science using satellite-based observations as the main focus. A Curriculum Design Summit will bring together master teachers, scientists, educators and evaluators to craft the geoscience curriculum. Included at this summit will be master teachers and program staff from the successful urban school district SCALE (System-wide Change for All Learners) programs in the Los Angeles Unified Public School/California State University, Dominguez Hills system and the Madison Metropolitan School District. The course will provide instruction on basic principles of remote sensing and spatial analysis, as well as four content areas of geoscience: meteorology/climatology; geology; oceanography; and Earth as a system. It will utilize the interactive VISITview software, which provides an on-line content delivery tool that facilitates real-time teaching and discussion sessions. Along with affording many instructional aspects similar to a traditional classroom for teachers, VISITview will enable content experts to make on-line follow-up visits to the classroom. Teacher recruitment efforts for this project are being concentrated in the Native American, Latino/Latina and African American communities, where participation and representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and in the geosciences is lowest. Teachers will receive 3 graduate credits for completion of the course, which is expected to become part of the regular UW curriculum once this pilot project has been completed and evaluated.