The WGBH Educational Foundation (WGBH) is developing, evaluating, and disseminating a Teachers' Domain digital library collection of 50 rich-media resources drawn from the national network of ATE Projects and Resource Centers to support the teaching and learning of advanced technologies in high schools. Leveraging NSF's investment in the original production of such learning objects for use in higher education settings through the ATE program, the project is identifying those most appropriate for teachers and students in grades 9-12 and adding background essays, lesson plans, and other contextualization features to support integration with commonly taught curricula, easy use by both teachers and students, and alignment with standards in mathematics and science as well as technology. A companion online professional development course targeting science, math, and technical/career education teachers at the high school level is also being produced and marketed. The Center for Children and Technology (CCT) at the Education Development Center (EDC) is piloting these resources in testbed schools and conducting a series of case studies analyzing use throughout the country. This project is helping to prepare the nation's technical workforce by enhancing the relevance and impact of STEM education while also encouraging students to consider further study and potential careers in advanced technology fields. A secondary goal is to prepare high school teachers to integrate such content within ongoing math and science classes. Dissemination, promotion, and marketing activities are conducted through collaborating ATE Projects and Resource Centers as well as established channels of WGBH and the other member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), engaging professional associations in K-12 science, math, and technology.
The past year marks the culmination of a four-year effort by WGBH Educational Foundation on our Teachers’ Domain Advanced Technological Education (ATE) media collection. Working with a team of advisors from a range of ATE Centers and projects, we developed 56 resources, adapted from the work of the Centers, projects, and public media sources. We supplemented these with 51 additional videos from earlier WGBH ATE-funded projects as well as a biotechnology collection funded by a private foundation. Each media resource is contextualized with a background essay and discussion questions for use by teachers and students in secondary schools (as well as community colleges and technical schools). Several are in lesson-plan or self-paced-lesson format, introducing students and teachers to the range of educational and career opportunities in these advanced technology fields. The ATE collection on Teachers' Domain can be found at www.teachersdomain.org/special/ate/. During the coming school year, we expect that the entire collection will transition to our successor platform, PBS LearningMedia. All Teachers’ Domain URLs will redirect to the new platform addresses, so that users who have bookmarked favorite resources will still find them easily. From September 1, 2010 to the end of June 2012, ATE project resource pages on Teachers' Domain have been viewed 36,232 times. 2602 media files (primarily videos) have been downloaded from these pages to users’ computers, and there have been 42, 870 online media views of videos or interactives from this project. Throughout the project, the EDC Center for Children and Technology provided formative and summative assessment. Their final report finds that teachers used the ATE resources primarily to introduce, illustrate, or review or reinforce a concept, or to explore career connections. They are well aligned with teachers’ instructional goals and classroom routines; are valuable for illustrating more complex concepts and processes that are difficult to visualize through lecture or other means; and provide students with a more nuanced understanding of content and how it is applied in real-world situations, as well as opportunities to identify with careers in advanced technologies.
