Project NANO (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Outreach) is a Portland, Oregon, based teacher training program that brings nanoscience tools into the classrooms of highly motivated grade 7-12 teachers and gives them the skills and content knowledge needed to teach their students how to design and complete their own inquiry-based science projects. The program was designed to improve high school, college, and STEM career readiness by providing a unique hands-on program that links visually and quantitatively the conceptual relationship between structure and function, science inquiry, and engineering design -all key themes in the new State/National STEM Standards.To date, Project NANO has tutored two cohorts (10+ each) of pre-and in-service STEM teachers to be knowledgeable and comfortable when teaching and advising nanoscience concepts with a tabletop scanning electron microscope. Each cohort of STEM teachers receives basic training in the theoretical, applied, and instructional aspects of scanning electron microscopy. Participants also acquire experience through development of guided inquiry-based SEM lesson plans that integrate directly into their existing curricula, and they learn techniques to engage as many as thirty students in STEM skills via access to optical and scanning electron microscopes in their classrooms. Longterm access to an expanding set of lesson plans, as developed and tested by other Project NANO teachers, is established as well. By training teacher cohorts in metropolitan regions such as the greater Portland metro area, a sustainable program has emerged that can be adopted by any community eager to bring nanoscience and nanotechnology tools into their student's lives and educational training. Key to the success of Project NANO are motivated STEM teachers, supportive parents, local businesses and community partners, and engaged higher education faculty who use such tools in basic and applied science applications. The project brings STEM teachers and university faculty together in a new and powerful collaborative.Teachers use Project NANO scanning electron and optical light microscopes to implement inquiry lesson plans they have developed for their classrooms, which address learning targets and STEM standards. Teacher outcomes measured are rigor of inquiry investigations developed. Preliminary findings have been positive, as teachers are developing more rigorous, standard-based STEM inquiry lesson plans that integrate easily into their current curricula.Students participating in Project NANO develop a unique and practical understanding of how nanoscale phenomena and concepts are used in variety of fields, which include medicine, chemistry, biology, engineering, environmental science, materials, geology, physics, and astrobiology. Student outcomes measured are student disposition toward science and the effect of STEM tools on student work samples in the areas of rigor and quality. Students are responding by producing higher quality laboratory reports, and they are enjoying the process. Work sample...

Wells, "Project NANO (nanoscience and nanotechnology outreach): a STEM training program that brings SEM's and stereoscopes into high-school and middle-school classrooms," ABSTRACTThe program Project NANO (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Outreach) enables middle and high school students to discover and research submicroscopic phenomena in a new and exciting way with the use of optical and scanning electron microscopes in the familiar surroundings of their middle or high school classrooms. Project NANO provides secondary level professional development workshops, support for classroom instruction and teacher curriculum development, and the means to deliver Project NANO toolkits (SEM, stereoscope, computer, supplies) to classrooms with Project NANO trained teachers. Evaluation surveys document the impact of the program on student's attitudes toward science and technology and on the learning outcomes for secondary level teachers. Project NANO workshops (offered for professional development credit) enable teachers to gain familiarity using and teaching with the SEM. Teachers also learn to integrate new content knowledge and skills into topic-driven, standards-based units of instruction specifically designed to support the development of students' higher order thinking skills that include problem solving and evidence-based thinking. The Project NANO management team includes a former university science faculty, two high school science teachers, and an educational researcher. To date, over 7500 students have experienced the impact of the Project NANO program, which provides an exciting and effective model for engaging students in the discovery of nanoscale phenomena and concepts in a fun and engaging way.

The teacher professional development program known as Project NANO (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Outreach) has more than 75 teachers in 8 different school districts that have given more than 7500 students in Portland area high school and middle school classrooms hands-on experience exploring the submicroscopic world with a research-grade scanning electron microscope (SEM). These students experience the same type of excitement and joy that every career microscopist has felt when they discover something new or unexpected with their microscope of choice. It's hard to imagine a more direct means to stimulate every student's sense of wonder about how and why natural and man-made materials function as they do than to allow students to use research-grade instruments to conduct their own inquiries and make their own discoveries. Project NANO students' explore several crosscutting concepts of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in real time with technology that illustrates how structure links with function, reveals hidden sub-microscopic patterns, and demonstrates when scale, proportion and quantity can affect a system's structure or performance. Project NANO students can deepen their understanding of the natural sciences and nanoscale concepts through inquiry projects.While it's easy to understand how Project NANO students could increase their awareness of nanoscience by over 60% and become aware of more STEM careers that involve using an SEM, the program has also increased rigor and the use of inquiry in the classroom. Project NANO workshops have evolved i) via the results of pre-and post-assessments, which demonstrate how directed and inquiry-based authentic research experiences impact student's attitudes toward (nano)science, and ii) through the use of resource folios, which support teachers' efforts to develop and scaffold lesson plans that incorporate the SEM and stereoscopes into authentic research experiences that reinforce their curriculum and reflect their unique teaching styles.Workshops: Project NANO operates via a collaboration between high school teachers, educational researchers, university faculty and administrators, school districts and administrators, and funding partners that include a philanthropic donor and electron microscope manufacturers and representatives. Our teacher training workshops (one-week summer professional development courses for novice and veteran Project NANO teachers) enable in-service teachers to go back into their classroom with a well crafted unit that fits their needs. Middle school teachers in particular develop cross-curricular lessons as part of a forensics science unit that involves biology, chemistry, physics, and geology. Veteran Project NANO teachers refine their initial lesson plans by taking the more advanced workshop, which has led to highly vetted lesson plans for each of the natural sciences. We have modified our workshops to provide all participants with more time to learn how the SEM works, become proficient with the instruments and image analysis with f...