Quark Net - Goals and Organization

Goals and Organization

Originally, QuarkNet established centers led by physicists participating in the CDF and DØ experiments at Fermilab's Tevatron in Batavia, Illinois and the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. It has expanded to include centers with participation in other particle physics experiments that are broadly representative of the field.

QuarkNet Goals
QuarkNet teachers provide opportunities for students to increase their scientific proficiency, especially in particle physics.
QuarkNet teachers create environments for students to interpret, evaluate and provide explanations for phenomena in the natural world..
Students of QuarkNet teachers show evidence that they understand how scientific knowledge is developed and engage in scientific practices and discourse.
QuarkNet teachers become more professional.

QuarkNet supports two classroom visions:

• Teachers use particle physics examples when teaching subjects such as momentum and energy.

• Teachers create scientific inquiry-based learning environments that provide students with opportunities for in-depth engagement in science. Teaching strategies emulate the way scientists build knowledge through inquiry.

QuarkNet is organized much like a particle physics experiment with a central design and infrastructure and work distributed among research groups nationwide. The interactions among physicist, teacher and student primarily take place at the local centers. The program prospers because these centers prosper. The current principal investigators for the program are: Marge Bardeen (Fermilab), Dan Karmgard, Randy Ruchti and Mitch Wayne (University of Notre Dame). Bardeen serves as the spokesperson for the program. A staff of four physics teachers provides resources and services to the centers and guidelines for center performance. Also, staff is responsible for activities at the national level. They lead workshops including Boot Camp and masterclasses, develop instructional materials including cosmic ray muon detectors, gather data for evaluation and more. In order to enhance its capacity, staff also works with a group of teachers, called QuarkNet Fellows, who help deliver the professional development programs for other teachers.

Read more about this topic:  Quark Net

Famous quotes containing the words goals and, goals and/or organization:

    We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.
    Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)

    I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.
    Frances Kuehn (b. 1943)

    In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)