WGBH in collaboration with The Children's Museum will demonstrate how video technology can be used as an effective tool for teacher training in science. The children's Museum current NSF project is developing a set of curriculum materials and teaching strategies to increase the effectiveness of science education in the middle schools and to encourage minority and female students to continue in science. It brings together Bernie Zubrowski of The Children's Museum, who has run successful "hands-on" science education sessions for 25 years, teachers in Boston public schools, and the Massachusetts Pre-Engineering program, providing minority scientists in the classroom as participants and role models. This combination provides an unusually fertile opportunity for documentation and instruction. The WGBH project will produce three forty minute teacher training videotapes designed to support teachers who are attempting to implement this new type of instruction in their middle school classes. The training tapes will be augmented by supporting print material -- a 24 page guide for teachers viewing the tapes as well as a 16 page guide written for college and university instructors who train teachers. A full range of dissemination activities is also planned. The cost sharing for the project will be sixteen percent of the NSF portion.
