Saturday, September 21, 2013

Dear Parents ... (From Manoharan)

Dear Parents,

Welcome to AIS 2013-2014 session at Lockheed Martin.  Some of you are new to AIS and some are returning parents. 

For about 20 weeks starting from October, your children will have a great learning experience while learning something new in science every week.  There will be about 50 topics at basic level covering some broad topics like Computer, Physics, Chemistry, Ecology, Biology, Astronomy, math, food, and others.

These topics will be handled by those who are driven by an interest to teach what they learnt or knew.  The important thing is that they are all more like you with a regular daytime jobs not related to teaching. 
You too can have an active role in this program.  We request you all to actively participate in this program which is currently run with few volunteers by sharing your expertise in science.

If you are a professional teacher, that is great.  If you are a scientist or Engineer, you can think of teaching something in science.  For most of us it is a little intimidating in the beginning.  But we have seen that with some preparations, anyone can do it. Remember, you will be teaching small groups of children and each group may have about 20 kids. If you are interested, try to take a topic in which you are comfortable, include a project that can give hands on experience and make the presentation simple. All expenses towards the project will be covered.

Please go through the various topics covered in 2012 and 2013 which are posted in the AIS blog.    You can come up with your own new topics in Science.  Even if you decide not to present but are ready to help in preparing the presentation, please discuss with Raj or any of the volunteers who will provide you with necessary ideas and help.

Let us have a great teaching experience together.
Looking forward to meeting you all.
Manoharan


Instructor Resources

Posted material for helping teachers to prepare AIS topics. Instructor Resources

Monday, September 16, 2013

AIS -topic analysis

To all,
.
I have given little more thought to the topics and I am submitting to all of you for consideration.
  1. Total number of classes: Oct (4 weeks), Nov (3), Dec (3), Jan (4), Feb (4), March (3)- Total of 21 weeks
  2. Assuming 3 classes of 20 children (assuming participation by 60 children), we need 63 presentations.
  3. First two weeks we either prepare a rocket or launch-all of the children work together this therefore leaves -57 slots
  4. Atleast 3-4 sessions are repeats -topics- illusion, volcano, frog dissection, health-yoga- that reduces the slots to 57-8=49 topics (single presentation)
  5. The topics that are relevant @basic level (with out complicated math or formula can be chosen from following broad topics:
  6. Computer (see Sam's list), 2 Physics (electricity, magnetism), 3. Chemistry (kitchen chemistry, soap, candle), 4 Ecology (tsunami, wild fire, pollution, recycling), 5. Biology (DNA, Panda, frog described above), 6. Astronomy (stars and planets, space travel), 7. math 8. food, 9. others.
  7. The point I am making is that we could poll parents by sharing this info and encourage them to participate.
Please comment.
Vasan

2013 Adventure in Science starting in October

Hello All

You all have registered and assigned the Lockheed Martin site for this year’s sessions. Welcome.

Hope you all have received the Parent orientation invitation from AIS. It is scheduled for Wednesday September 25th at the 4-H Center in Derwood Maryland starting at 7:30 PM. We will provide a brief overview of the program for all, site specific details for each of the sites. This is  a welcome-meet and greet session. Last probably till 9:00 PM at the latest.

This will also give you a chance to meet other parents and learn about the AIS expectation of each family.

Hope to see you all there. If you want to bring friends that are interested but have been unable to register, please do. There is nothing against bringing your children-don’t want to bore them about the mundane details!! Entirely up to you.

We “normally” have some snacks which they may enjoy tasting!!

If you are not registered for Lockheed and you get this, please let me know. This was the preferred e-mail you folks had given for notification. Please let me know of any changes.

If someone you know has been registered at Lockheed and is not in this list, please ask them to let me know.


Cheers
Raj