This proposal has been prepared by the oklahoma consortium for indian education excellence (ociee) led by seminole public schools and oklahoma state university (OSU). Ociee was formed to facilitate…

This proposal has been prepared by the oklahoma consortium for indian education excellence (ociee) led by seminole public schools and oklahoma state university (OSU). Ociee was formed to facilitate a systemic change for native american students. The consortium consists of seminole public schools, the seminole nation, and the potawatomi nation located in rural central oklahoma. There are 10 independent school districts in pottawatomie county and 9 in seminole county with an approximate enrollment of 1500 students in the area high schools. The consortium schools have a high percentage of native american students with a high need for stem education. This project will build on NASA is native american initiatives like scientific knowledge for indian learning and leadership (skill) and native american research laboratories (narl) and focus on developing an innovative web-based learning environment entitled eclipse (environment for cyber-learning integrating problem solving experiences). Eclipse will provide scaffolding for both students and teachers and will be implemented in rural oklahoma high schools with a high percentage of native american students. The instructor module will feature a NASA education activity search engine and guide teachers through the processes of designing a NASA-centered stem problem-solving activity, aligning IT with content standards, assessing learning outcomes recorded by the system, and reflecting on the effectiveness of this activity. Teachers will share ideas on effective implementation of NASA-centered cyberlearning via eclipse s online social network. The learner module will display the problem description, tasks, problem and career awareness resources, allow students to take and share notes while they are learning online, and provide metacognitive prompts that coach students in constructing self-explanations. Eclipse will be populated with NASA-centered and gender-neutral content featuring the unique stem contributions and career awareness activities of each of the four NASA mission directorates. Design and implementation of the eclipse system is informed by the theoretical framework of problem-based learning and the recommendations of the NSF taskforce on cyberlearning (2008). Software, content, and professional development will be performed by an experienced team of OSU faculty and graduate students and 10 ociee high-school stem teachers. Career awareness content will be embedded within each eclipse activity, not as a trivial add-on, but as a focused description of the specific NASA careers related to the current content module, education and expertise requirements for that particular job, and examples of job activities. Each career awareness component will include a webcast featuring a NASA professional. Special attention will be given to identifying and interviewing native american NASA professionals and interns. While the project team will populate eclipse with 20 NASA-centered and gender-neutral stem content activities (5 for each NASA mission directorate), our goal is to help high-school teachers develop - an appreciation of NASA s unique contributions to stem, - technological pedagogical content knowledge required to use technology effectively in teaching stem, and - the skills of adopting and creating stem content using eclipse and NASA education products. Sustainability of the project will be ensured by - conducting a professional development institute for 50 high-school stem teachers, representing diverse oklahoma school districts - designing an eclipse training module for the NASA electronic professional development network and OSU s electronic professional development consortium - integrating the eclipse system in the NASA inspire program, which annually impacts about 3,000 high school students across the nation. Ociie students participating in this project will be encouraged to apply for the NASA inspire program.