Has your application achieved or exceeded its goals? Is it fully operational? How many people benefit from it? Describe future plans for the project?
o Improve the computational knowledge and skills of 46 secondary science teachers.
o Address computational science research problems in the life, earth/space, and physical sciences and enable teachers to incorporate such applications in their classrooms.
o Train these teachers to use computer networks to access selected supercomputer applications and communicate with UCSD and SDSC mentors.
o Prepare teachers to assume leadership roles in staff development at the school and district level and disseminate their knowledge of computational science and telecommunications.
o Form a cadre of UCSD and SDSC faculty and staff to support participating teachers during the school year through a telecommunications network.
STEP has succeeded on all five fronts. While the program did experience some turnover of participants, the teams at the 19 schools thrived. Teachers learned about the latest computational and communication packages used by researchers across the country to address todays problems. Students use these tools and techniques to supplement their textbooks. Anna Wilder-ONeils students at San Dieguito High School, for example, turned their questions about genetics into classroom lessons using the Genscope software developed by BBN Systems and Technologies. They also researched topics at the cutting edge of chemistry, such as nanotechnology and buckminsterfullerenes, using the World Wide Web.
These activities are highlighted in a slide accompanying this submission that shows a Web page on Ozone developed by Wilder-ONeil and Robert North of Hoover High School along with a view of the San Dieguito High School classroom with four students grouped around a Macintosh:
STEPs mentors include Randall Souviney and Gabriele Wienhausen at UCSD and Rozeanne Steckler, John Helly, Hans-Werner Braun, Kim Baldridge, Jayne Keller, and many others at SDSC, who contributed their time to help raise STEP teachers awareness of current activities in computational science. In addition, SDSCs Mac Support and Network Support groups worked to iron out the technological wrinkles, which was essential to success of the summer workshops.
Helly, for example, presented his recent work on the San Diego Bay Project and its associated Web site, which inspired STEP participants Jay Klopfenstein and Roger Wynn to extend a cooperative program between SDSC, the San Diego Water Authority and the local schools, which provided water testing kits to use in the classroom, and establish a Web page featuring possible workshops associated with water quality. This project was an accepted presentation at Supercomputing 95 and is highlighted in one of the slides accompanying this application:
In meeting one of STEPs goals, the teachers disseminated their newfound skills through many in-service presentations at their home sites. As additional evidence of the confidence gained by the STEP teachers, three poster presentations and two tutorials were accepted for the Education Program of Supercomputing 95 held in San Diego. One of these tutorials has already been described in Question 3. Two hundred teachers from across the United States and Mexico attended Supercomputing 95, along with an additional 200 local educators who attended a special Teacher-Administrator day and 60 local educators with up to 5 students each who attended Teacher-Student day. Also at Supercomputing 95, Tim Towler, Dave Harlow, and Olin Elliott presented a tutorial entitled Using Web Browsers as an Educational Tool:
Web Browser as Educational Tool (Supercomputing '95)
Altogether, at these and other workshops and in-services, STEP participants have reached more than 2,000 teachers and untold numbers of students. A summer 1996 workshop will be conducted by the lead teachers, and SDSC continues to offer the STEP teachers use of SDSC facilities, including the training room.