[UAGCNews] MIT and OpenCourseWare aimed at *high school students*

[T Lane]

MIT launches web site for high school students


November 28, 2007

MIT President Susan Hockfield announces today the launch of a new
web site, Highlights for High
<http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/home/home/index.htm>  School,
(http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/home/home/index.htm)  that will
provide resources to improve science, technology, engineering and
math (STEM) instruction at the high school level.

The web site builds on the success of MIT's revolutionary
OpenCourseWare initiative and is designed to inspire the next
generation of engineers and scientists and to be a valuable tool
for high school teachers.

"Strength in K-12 math and science will be increasingly important
for America if the nation is to continue to lead the innovation
economy," Hockfield said. 

"Highlights for High School will provide students and teachers
with innovative tools to supplement their math and science
studies," she added. "We hope it will inspire students to reach
beyond their required classwork to explore more advanced material
through OCW and also might encourage them to pursue careers in
science and engineering."

Highlights for High School features more than 2,600 video and
audio clips, animations, lecture notes and assignments taken from
actual MIT courses, and categorizes them to match the Advanced
Placement physics, biology and calculus curricula.
Demonstrations, simulations and animations give educators
engaging ways to present STEM concepts, while videos illustrate
MIT's hands-on approach to the teaching of these subjects. 

Thomas Magnanti, former dean of the School of Engineering at MIT,
chaired the committee that developed the site. "As has been well
documented, the U.S. needs to invest more in secondary education,
particularly in STEM fields. MIT, as a leading institution of
science and technology, has an obligation to help address the
issue," he said.

Highlights for High School represents MIT's first step in
adapting the successful OpenCourseWare model to secondary
education. The web site organizes the course materials currently
featured on OCW--including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments
and exams--into a format that is more accessible to high school
students and teachers. 

An estimated 10,000 U.S. high school instructors and 5,000 U.S.
high school students already visit MIT OpenCourseWare each month,
and MIT expects Highlights for High School to make MIT's course
materials even more useful to these audiences.

 Highlights for High School continues MIT's tradition of
supporting science, technology and engineering instruction at the
secondary level. One of the most prominent previous efforts was
the Physical Science Study Committee, a program begun in 1956 as
a collaboration between MIT physics professors and high school
physics teachers, which dramatically changed the way physics was
taught in high schools. MIT has more than 40 K-12 outreach
programs, including the Edgerton Center, MIT's Minority
Introduction to Engineering and Science and MIT's Educational
Studies Program.

With Highlights for High School in place, a broader plan proposed
for a secondary education program--OCW SE--may include creating a
teacher-in-residence program to develop new open curricula with
high school educators and organizing an MIT secondary-education
mentor corps.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/techtalk-info.html>  on November
28, 2007 <http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/techtalk52-10.pdf>
(download PDF). 

 

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