Our spring 1999 MVP's are Mike and Eddy Beresford; Kevin Schulte, a student at Colerain High School; and Ferd and Jill Hersman, Joe Rave, Jack Reed, and Dick Van Veen, all from the Retired Engineers and Scientists of Cincinnati.
The GCSEC MVP's are people who would like to be an active part of the Concept Development Project. There are a very small number of positions on the advisory committees, and the suggested backgrounds for many of these positions are rather specific. And the role of the advisory committees is by nature advisory rather than active. The MVP Committee provides an opportunity for many more people to become valuable and meaningful members of the team that is working to create a nonprofit Tristate science, mathematics and engineering technology education center.
A significant role for a partnership of one math teacher and one science teacher (who may or may not be from the same school building) is to adopt the overview and label for a particular exhibit. The partnership would revise the exhibit overview and use the exhibit label guidelines to write a label for the exhibit. These partnerships would provide a number of personalized examples for exhibit labels and overviews. Comparisons of the different examples would provide valuable input to the Exhibit Instructional Labels Advisory Committee that would be incorporated in improvements to the exhibit label guidelines..
There are numerous important research activities that people can perform at their convenience. Examples include searching for and examining Internet web sites addressing science, mathematics and engineering content; identifying professional organization web sites; finding and cataloging sites supporting education instruction; finding and cataloguing family oriented science, mathematics and engineering web sites; and discovering relevant web sites for workforce development and teacher professional development. Each MVP can pursue and develop his or her particular area of interest.
To support exhibit labels and demonstrate the potential educational uses of the exhibits, collections of challenging questions and answers are needed for each exhibit. These can also be developed at the individual's convenience. For teachers, developing questions and answers may be recognized as continuing education work. And teachers are not the only excellent sources for these questions and answers. Active and retired engineers and other professionals often suggest some of the most interesting and stimulating ways of examining, studying and using exhibits.
As exhibit labels are developed they are included on the GCSEC web site. Narrative introductions to exhibits are also posted on the web site. Critiquing and reviewing these materials is another quite valuable contribution to the Concept Development Project.
At GCSEC public presentations, exhibit "explainers" can significantly increase the enjoyment and educational experience of student and adult visitors. Of course, teachers can be excellent explainers because of their experience presenting and sharing information, and the role can provide a meaningful opportunity for teachers to experiment with and practice leading inquiry-based learning sessions. (This activity may be recognized by schools as continuing education work.) Parents, scout leaders, students and others all have proven to be dynamic explainers as well. A natural curiosity, willingness to learn work with people are some of the most important qualifications for explainers. Some of the GCSEC MVP's try to participate as explainers at most or all of the public presentations.
Another valuable role for MVP's is serving as links or liaisons to the various active and retired teacher, engineer and other organizations throughout the Tristate. These communicators will keep the groups aware of GCSEC progress, relay suggestions and comments back to the GCSEC, and provide information to group members who might themselves be interested in becoming MVP's.
These are some of the ways that people of all ages throughout the Tristate can participate in and contribute to creation of a world class non-profit science, mathematics and engineering technology education center for the Tristate. Please let us know how you would like to become a partner in this effort.
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