The Education Corner

APS Releases Education Video

The APS website now features a five-minute video on a DC-motor activity created by APS educator Ed Lee for the APS High School Physics Teachers Days. In the video, APS education and diversity director Ted Hodapp and outreach director Becky Thompson-Flagg trade quips as they explain how to do the activity and how the motor works. The video, which is intended to be a resource for high school teachers who want to do hands-on activities in their classrooms, can be found on the APS website. The APS website also provides an annotated handout explaining the various steps of the activity.
   DC Motor Education Video

NSF STEP Grant Proposals Due in Late September

The National Science Foundation’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) seeks to increase the number of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Among other activities, currently funded projects focus on recruiting STEM majors from current high school and undergraduate student populations, provide scholarship support and research opportunities for potential majors, and help build bridges between universities and local community colleges and K-12 schools.  The NSF is soliciting two types of proposals—those that provide for full implementation efforts at academic institutions, and those that support educational research projects on associate or baccalaureate degree attainment in STEM.
   Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program

AAPT 2009 Summer Meeting

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) 2009 Summer Meeting will run from Saturday, July 25th to Wednesday, July 29th in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The theme of the meeting will be “Discovering the Universe: Democritus and Galileo to Fundamental Particles and Cosmology.” Just prior to the meeting will be a workshop on the Advanced Lab, and immediately following the meeting will be the 2009 Physics Education Research Conference.
  American Association of Physics Teachers

Standards to Provide Educational Achievement for Kids Act (SPEAK) Act

On June 10, Congressman Vernon J. Ehlers (R-MI, and APS Member) and Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) introduced the SPEAK Act, which would create or adopt voluntary national standards for K-12 math and science education. This is an effort to provide more consistency in states’ standards in these areas. For more information, go to Thomas at the Library of Congress and search on Bill Number H.R. 2790 or Bill Number S. 1231.