The Whitaker Center has recently partnered with the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) to develop a repository of our STEM faculties' teaching activities. SERC provides the web management, pedagogic guidance, and an editorial review process for the development and cataloging of well-designed and educationally sound science activities. Our Whitaker Center has embraced this mechanism and will now extend its use to our Summer Science Institutes.
Beginning with the 2009 Institute, middle and high school teachers will be uploading the inquiry-based science activities they develop (and activities that are mapped against our State's Science Standards), thereby making these products available to teachers across the state and nation. As the Institutes are integrated into TERRIFIC, the 6th – 9th grade teaching activities developed collaboratively with the Graduate Student Fellows will also be uploaded into SERC's archives.
At a February 2009 workshop, faculty participants learned about Sharing Teaching Materials Online. Topics included designing activities so that they are most broadly useful and helping each other refine their activities for sharing via the web.
Members of the Whitaker Center community can submit teaching activities to the collection by completing the submission form.