ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612030148
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
VIRGINIA TECH has some exciting ideas about bringing science, math and technology into the public-school classroom in new ways.
The Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom will open on the Tech campus next year, putting research projects at seven of Tech's colleges in the reach of Virginia's schoolchildren, either in person or via distance-learning videos and telecommunications.
The institute, co-sponsored by Tech, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is being developed to link classes to university research projects that would be useful in teaching science. So far, the institute's director has been able to identify 300 or so such projects.
It's hard to see exactly how this would work. Still, the institute is developing a plan to train people to help the teachers take advantage of lab technology, and is working with NASA's Langley Research Center to train school leaders in technology management.
The idea promises to offer encouragement and support to teachers and expand the resources available to them - exactly the kind of thinking needed to raise math and science education as the country struggles to maintain its economic leadership in an increasingly complex and competitive technological age.
Anyone who thinks America is falling short now because teachers don't work hard enough or care passionately enough about their subject would have been contradicted by the excitement with which preliminary information about the institute was received at a recent meeting of the Virginia Association of Science Teachers. Teachers are hungry for such assistance.
The program is the first of its kind, but its organizers think it could become a national model. If it succeeds, the enthusiasm teachers already have shown will be justified, and Virginia's schoolchildren should be thrilled.
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