LAEP Teacher Training Brings Teachers, Science and Technology Together

On a warm August morning at Venice High School in Los Angeles, a small group of middle and high school science teachers are using probes and scientific calculators to measure the classroom's air temperature.

"It's 23 degrees Celsius," exclaims an eager "student" who is quickly answered by Target Science leader Sandra Licari who is teaching the class.

"Do you see what we have here?" Licari says. "An instant lesson - the micro habitat."

Meanwhile, in an adjacent classroom, a group of elementary school teachers armed with digital cameras, iMacs and scanners are learning how use the Internet and digital imaging to teach their seven- and eight-year-old students about the structure and habitat of birds.

Both activities are designed to help elementary and secondary teachers use technology to improve science instruction by using the Internet, various software programs and other technologies to conduct research and enrich instructional materials. These science workshops are part of a series of Advanced Technology Workshops funded by a $250,000 grant from the Boeing Company. Additional funded was provided by the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

"Workshops like this make you a lot more confident about teaching new things in the classroom," said Pamela Shuman, a science teacher at Montebello High School. "The best thing is to have access to other teachers' knowledge."

Participants in the five-day workshop, developed by LAEP's Target Science teacher network and presented in collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified School District, also took a virtual field trip to Griffith Park, learned how to use spread sheets to track scientific data, how to use email to communicate with peers and experts outside of their schools and leadership and presentation skills. After taking the virtual field trip, teachers then had the opportunity to create their own virtual field trips using the Griffith Park project as a model. Other Web-based activities dealt with animal extinction and natural disasters.

"Teachers have the chance here to work directly with technology and see how it can fit in with curriculum," said Juliet Ethirveerasingam, a fourth-grade teacher who created a Web-based lesson plan called "Bird Stories, Fact or Fiction?"

"This activity will give students the opportunity to distinguish between their scientific knowledge of the life cycle of birds with their often exposure to the imaginary life of birds in literature," she said.

The Boeing grant also funded a similar workshop series in for math instruction in June and will provide for two follow-up sessions in the fall. For more information on the Advanced Technology Training or for information on future LAEP teacher trainings, contact the Target Science Teacher Network via email at target@laep.org .

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