2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

Emily Kellagher works with teachers during the ICEE climate science workshop.
magazines, websites and films to teach themselves climate
science, ICEE is developing a suite of web-based
modules to help teachers learn the Essential Principles
of Climate Science. Based on a workshop held in June
2010, a suite of materials, including videos, activities
and teaching tips, has been made available online on
the ICEE 101 website: http://cires.colorado.edu/education/outreach/ICEE/workshop/.
A community forum
for teachers to share ideas and address challenges
is on the ICEE Online website (http://iceeonline.org/
forum), and a full online course is in development for
those seeking more in-depth experience.
Graduate Student Education
CIRES Outreach leads an NSF-funded, grades
K-12 program to place science graduate students in
classrooms within the Boulder Valley School District
(BVSD). The project enhances the acquisition of STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills by
fourth and fifth graders and middle-school students
in the more socioeconomically diverse BVSD schools
by giving them the opportunity to study the ecology
of extreme environments. Graduate student “Fellows”
assist teachers while still conducting their own
research. Some of the K-12 students will be the first in
their family to graduate from high school, and Fellows
are able to help them understand what it’s like to be a
scientist and to know more about what it’s like to be at
a university.
Colorado teacher Jennifer Taylor examines a classroom demonstration
activity during the ICEE climate science workshop.
Sun-Earth Connections
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launched
February 2010, and as the lead education team for one of
the SDO instruments, the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability
Experiment, CIRES Outreach provides teacher professional
development as well as classroom kits. The CIRES team
involved with the project has collaborated with other SDO
teams to make SDO data more accessible and meaningful
to educators and their students. CIRES is developing a
video solar library of terms that uses SDO data to supplement
the solar learning kits. Solar science lessons also will
be developed for SMART board technologies so that teachers
can use them in their classrooms.
CIRES Annual Report 2011 73