[STEMcoding] STEMcoding project FREE summer professional development for teachers

 

See below the message from Dr. Chris Orban leading this initiative.  If interested please fill out the form below Link: https://u.osu.edu/stemcoding/2018/02/05/summer-training-for-teachers/

 

As many of you know, the STEMcoding project is working to create simple coding activities that illustrate physics and physical science concepts. We posted the first physics-focused coding activity to the hour of code (go.osu.edu/hourofcode) and we are working to record more coding tutorials for our youtube channel (go.osu.edu/STEMtube) for physics and eventually for chemistry and math. Importantly, the youtube channel features a high percentage of underrepresented groups in STEM. 
We are offering a mostly-online summer professional development course through OSU this July 2018. Thanks to grant funds we can offer 1 or 2 graduate credit hours for FREE to high school physics or physical science teachers who need graduate credits for their accreditation. The course will be administered through regular video chats and an online system for completing the coding activities. Ideally there would be one face-to-face meeting in Columbus or Marion with each participant in the course. If you have never taken classes at OSU before there will be a $60 registration fee. The grant would cover the remaining tuition costs. 

If you are interested in the graduate credits, please reach out to Tom Alexander (
alexander.961@osu.edu) who is the director of admissions at OSU’s Marion campus. The course is Physics 5100 (physics for in-service teachers) and it will take place during summer session 3 (July 2018). Although the course is listed on the OSU Marion campus (where I teach), the graduate credit is identical to the graduate credit you would earn through through a professional development course on the Columbus campus.
If you are not a high school physics or physical science teacher but you would still like to enroll in the course for graduate credit, please let me know and I will see what we can do. At this stage we do not want to rule out the possibility of enrolling math, computer science or chemistry teachers in the course. Please let us know if you fall into this category. 

If you do not need graduate credits but you would like to join us in the video chats, please let me know. We can also provide CEUs for participating if needed. This would be another option for teachers from outside physics or physical science.

Please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to share this opportunity with your teacher networks. We are very happy to offer this summer course again and we hope many of you participate!

best,

Chris Orban

Assistant Professor of Physics

Ohio State University


P.S. We will be making a presentation at the upcoming “Modelpalooza” meeting in Columbus on saturday Feb 10th. Please feel free to talk with us there about the summer opportunity if you have questions.


P.P.S.  If you are looking for tutorials on block-based coding (like scratch.mit.edu or blockly) we do not actually use these languages. Instead we use very simple javascript coding, which is text based instead of block based. You can probably find good block based training through code.org.