Staff Teachers
Staff teachers lead and coordinate the project helping to establish and build the capacity of the partnership of physicists and teachers at each center. Each staff teacher develops a close relationship with mentors and teachers at assigned centers, ensures that each center is visited regularly, and keeps in touch via e-mail, phone, etc. With guidance from the PIs, the staff:
- Enable teams of teachers and physicists to implement effective center activities and to participate with other centers in national activities.
- Help create online and hard-copy resources, provide content for websites, and provide support for teachers using resources.
- Help teachers create experiments that use computers for data acquisition and processing.
- Provide peer coaching for teachers including classroom visits.
- Support QuarkNet fellows, teachers who have assumed national leadership positions within the project.
- Hold a variety of national activities such as Data Camp and get togethers at AAPT meetings.
- Participate in broader impact activities that share QuarkNet experiences with other program providers and teachers and students.
- Prepare monthly and annual reports and participate in Advisory Group meetings and annual reviews.
- Help gather data to assess the project as requested by the outside evaluator.
- Work with specialized staff member(s) to manage cosmic ray muon detector kit production and shipping and repair/replacement of detector equipment in the field.
IT Specialists
IT specialists provide staff and teachers with IT tools they need to promote professional development among science educators. This includes:
- Develop and maintain the project's software products, including the i2u2.org e-Labs, CIMA, EQUIP, and the main QuarkNet website quarknet.org.
- Develop and maintain of supporting software tools such as the developers' wiki, the Bugzilla installation, and the QuarkNet GitHub page.
This responsibility also includes the general administration and maintenance of QuarkNet's IT infrastructure:
- Administer the QuarkNet servers.
- Assist with the e-Labs Help Desk.
- Manage and secure user data and user account databases.
- Communicate with the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing and Xeno Media.
- Facilitate the collection and processing of program data for the outside evaluator.
IT specialists routinely provide additional ad-hoc services at the request of other staff, PIs, and teachers. This may include establishing file servers and arranging data transfers, technical collaboration with outside projects (e.g. CREDO, Fermilab's TARGET, Parsl, and ROSE-AI), or developing unique data tools such as for the 2017 cosmic ray eclipse project or distibutable USB drives pre-installed with ROOT for CMS classroom activities.
Education Specialists
The Educational Specialist responsible for the Data Activities Portfolio:
- Reviews all activities to ensure that they follow good education design guidelines.
- Works with authors to ensure that activities address national standards such as NGSS, Common Core, AP Physics and IB Physics standards, are written for the general physics teacher and follow formatting guidelines.
- Works with staff to develop strategies for publicizing the activities to mentors and teachers.
- Works with staff on other tasks as needed.
The Educational Specialist responsible for Data Camp: (Jeremy should edit as needed.)
- Manages recruitment and selection of participants.
- Works with QuarkNet and Fermilab staff to make Data Camp arrangements .
- Supports Teaching & Learning (T&L) fellows.
- Works with T&L fellows to maintain the Data Camp design and update as needed.
- Works with T&L fellows to facilitate Data Camp.