The 2006 Summer Professional Development Workshop was held June 19 through 30 at the University of Texas at El Paso and attended by ten El Paso metropolitan area middle and high school teachers. The workshop was collaboratively facilitated by teams from both UTEP and Purdue University, and featured both nanoscience and educational themes.

Participants working on AFM modeling activity

The UTEP team is headed by physics faculty member Eric Hagedorn, and also includes physics faculty members Milijana Suskavcevic, and Felicia Manciu as well as a preservice middle school science teacher, Liliana Sepulveda. The Purdue team, led by Professor of Physics Nick Giordano, included chemistry education graduate students Shanna Daly, Kelly Hutchison, and David Sederberg and Drs. William Fornes and Randall Batchelor. Mr. Bill Hunt, a high school science teacher from Big Pines, California, was the lead teacher for the two weeks.

Participants with Dr. Felicia Manciu in AFM/Fourier IR spectroscopy lab

STM and AFM heads in Dr. Manciu’s lab

The three nanoscience themes emphasized during the two weeks were: scanning probe techniques, self-assembly, and carbon nanotubes. In addition to presentations by Nick Giordano, Eric Hagedorn, Mickey Manciu (UTEP Physics) and Karla Soto (UTEP Metallurgy), the Purdue graduate students developed and facilitated some wonderful inquiry-based activities on each of these themes.

The educational themes emphasized during the two weeks were: standards-based inquiry science teaching, assessing student preconceptions of nano concepts, and the effective use of models in science teaching. Excellent educational activities for assessing students’ sense of scale and helping the teachers better use models in science instruction were supplied by Dr. Lynn Bryan.

Participating teachers came from each of El Paso’s three major school districts: the El Paso, Ysleta, and Socorro Independent School Districts. During the second week of the workshop the teachers developed their own nanoscience lessons for classroom use. These lessons are aligned with Texas state standards and the districts’ scopes and sequences.

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A web portal has been established at NCLT for the UTEP participants to share workshop materials and new ideas. One-day follow-up workshops are planned for both Fall, 2006 and Spring, 2007.