Research Experiences for Teachers - RETKelly Forest – Grier School

Summer of 2014Origami Engineering Project with the mechanical engineering Department at Penn State.

RET Expectations• Eight week commitment• $6000.00 stipend• 30 hours a week• Two weekly group meetings• Work with a graduate student• Summer outreach program for 7-9 year old girls

science camp• Summer outreach program for 7-12 year olds at the

Palmer Museum at Penn State• An hour long presentation (including powerpoint )and

demonstration for the Engineering Ambassadors• A poster presentation at the Emerging Researchers

National (ERN) conference in DC in February 2015.

Summer of 2015 • NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center

(NERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST)

RET Expectations• Six week commitment• $5000.00 stipend• 30 hours a week• Weekly meeting with the other RETs and young

scholars• Weekly meeting with research group• A submitted lesson plan or plans on a topic

related to research to do in the classroom• Poster session at the end of the 6 weeks• 5 minute powerpoint presentation at the end of 6

weeks• NSF site visit poster presentation (tomorrow)

How to find an RET?• Google: Research Experience for Teachers • Get on mailing lists – CSATS – Center for science

and the schools at Penn State. • L-CSATS-K12TEACHERS@LISTS.PSU.EDU

Research• Lots of reading about the project or work you will

be doing.

• Asking a lot of questions about the project• listening to what people are doing• being overwhelmed in the beginning.

Origami Engineering RET• My graduate student was working on her thesis,

so I needed to be independent in order to get things done.

• Favorite part: working with the undergrads on outreach projects

Outreach 1 – Science camp for girls

Outreach 2 – Presentation for the Engineering Ambassadors

Summer 2 - ASSIST RETGoal for this RET was to learn how I could find a way to use the GoogleGlass in my classroom.

Non-rigid face tracking

Annotate

Training

Patch training

Face Detector

Facial recognition program

Lesson for ASSIST

What the students produced

Lab work from this project

Benefits of RET• Working with undergraduates, graduates and

professors• Learning something new • Researching• Pushing yourself to do something unfamiliar • Bringing your summer experiences into the

classroom with new lesson plans and details about what different engineers are doing at Penn State

• If you create a lesson plan, possible money to get the materials for your class.

Questions ??• Kelly Forest• Science department head/physics teacher• Grier School• kforest@grier.org