Computational Science and Education in the 21st Century

Workshop for the Blackgold School District
Alberta, Canada - Aug. 25, 1997

Dr. Kris Stewart (stewart@sdsu.edu)
San Diego State University

Upd 05nov2023 URL https://stewart.sdsu.edu/blackgold/index.html

Computational Science is the exciting blend of


Skills needed to be successful
Computational Tools to Assist the Scientist
Some Activities of San Diego Middle/High School Teachers (STEP)
Science Discovery from SDSC
One of the things I have learned in working with the teachers in the STEP program was that they knew best what would work well in their own curricula, in their own school and the learning environments of their students. I would like to ask the Blackgold teachers to work through the CD rom version of this Internet site from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), called Science Discovery, which I will leave with you, as well as access it on-line. Please work in groups to identify which interactive activies you feel correspond to your curricula and let's have a presentation of your findings at the end of our session.
Information Overload (the Web can be a Time Sink)
I've used the Web to help in teach my courses at SDSU. I'll devote a few of the beginning sessions to work in the Unix Computer Lab at SDSU to make sure the students become comfortable with the Web, since that's where their course handouts will be made availabe, and with email, since that's the mechanism I use for students to have extended office hours, ask questions and submit their assignments. I also schedule a Lab Session to explicitly cover the reality of the overwhelming amount of information on the Wide World Web, the lack of peer review of content and discuss ideas to try to organize the pertinent information. At the end of the lab seesion on Info Overload, I remind the students to ask themselves, reguarly when on-line, What did you do today? Then What did you accomplish today? Then Is all your homework done for tomorrow, yet?

Let's have some fun and EXPLORE!

Dealing with the Web is a personal thing. I can only only speak to sources that have appealled to me, over time. They will be biased towards to U.S., so I'd like to invite you to let me know about Canadian sites that you have found useful

Some Thoughts on Using the Internet for Information - It's Dynamic! (which isn't always good)


And if you still want to know about STEP, I would like to invite you to take a look at an article that Janet Bowers and I wrote and have had accept to SC97 High Performance Networking and Comupting
STEP: A Case Study on Building a Bridge Between HPC Technology and the Secondary Classroom

Or examine the final reports from the teachers themselves, available on line from:
STEP Teachers' Final Reports

Kris' current jobs