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Bringing the Research Lab to the Classroom
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Berkil Alexander, a Physics teacher at Cobb County’s Pebblebrook
High School, recently completed a seven-week GIFT Fellowship with Georgia
Tech’s Food Processing Technology Division (FPTD). Georgia Intern-Fellowships
for Teachers or GIFT is designed to enhance mathematics and science
experiences of Georgia teachers and their students. GIFT teachers are
involved in cutting edge scientific research, data analysis, curriculum
development, and real-world inquiry and problem solving. The program
is administered through Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating
Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC).
During his fellowship,
Alexander worked with researchers in FPTD’s environmental technologies,
machine vision, and robotics groups. He says while working with the
environmental technologies group on a project involving the ultraviolet
sterilization of fruit juice and opaque liquids, he realized how such
technologies operate on a basic level. “It wasn’t as far
from basic physics as I thought it would be.”
In the machine
vision area, he worked with researchers developing a quality screening
system for bakery buns. He says from that experience he feels better
equipped to teach his students about the manipulation of the electromagnetic
spectrum and some of the other uses of light.
Alexander says the experience
in the robotics group sparked his interest in considering the addition
of robotics in his curriculum. Robotics currently is not taught in
his high school, and he would be interested in organizing a club
where students can come together and learn how to construct robots.
He says
that robotics encompasses a lot of the teaching standards, such as
the conversion of motion to Newton’s laws to electricity and
energy transformation.
Overall, Alexander says his GIFT Fellowship
was an awesome, very enlightening experience that got him re-excited
about the scientific research process. “Sometimes in teaching
you get stagnant and forget what it’s like to really use science
to solve problems. I’m an empirical thinker, so it got me back
into that mode, and that was the most gratifying experience for me.”
Dr.
Wayne Daley, FPTD’s associate division chief served as Alexander’s
GIFT mentor during the fellowship. It was Dr. Daley’s first time
as a GIFT mentor, and he also thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
“Working
with the GIFT program allowed us an opportunity to expose an area high
school teacher to a real-world research environment. The technologies
we are developing run the gamut of engineering and science disciplines,
which provide a platform from which teachers can transfer what they’ve
learned during their fellowship experience to their respective teaching
disciplines,” says Daley.
“It is also stimulating and refreshing
to work with people who are not involved in the work we do on a day-to-day
basis. Many times they ask the obvious questions that will cause us
to rethink or re-examine our approaches, which is always useful in
the areas in which we work,” adds Daley.
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