CATALyST

CATALyST Staff Attend Exploratorium Professional Development

"Any question asked can be answered by an experiment." These are the words that Missy Wooley, CATALyST Staff Member and RIPPLE Site Coordinator, lived by as she attended the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute of Physics in San Francisco, California, June 27-July 24, 2004. A professional home for middle and high school science teachers for over twenty years, the TI offered Missy a rich mix of hands-on activities based on Exploratorium exhibits, content-based discussions, classroom materials, web-based teaching resources, and machine shop experiences.

Held in the acclaimed Exploratorium science museum, each six hour day of the institute concentrated on the following topics: perception, the eye and brain, light, color, spectra, images, magnetism, waves, sound, music, electrostatics, electric current, and heat and temperature.

In addition, TI staff focused on concepts that were modeled throughout the exhibits housed at the Exploratorium; these concepts were further developed through instructions for building miniature exhibits (snacks) that teachers could build at the Exploratorium and take back to their classrooms.

Missy's charge was to glean as much information as possible to bring back to CATALyST as she and Cathi Cox, CATALyST Program Coordinator, begin to develop its first Physics project. Paul Doherty and Don Rathjen hosted the renowned event that involved teachers from all over the nation as well as other parts of the world.

Designed for high school physical science and physics teachers, the course provided Missy access to a machine shop in order to build her own snacks, along with the learning studio (library/resource center) where she was able to do research for two projects that were to be completed and presented to the rest of our group during the four week period. Furthermore, while Missy attended the Physics institute, other institutes were conducted as well: new teacher institute, life science teacher institute, and a math institute.

CATALyST congratulates Missy on a job well done and looks forward to the evolution of RIPPLE, its Research and Inquiry-Based Physics Project with LIGO and the Exploratorium.