Shenandoah Valley Nanoscience Outreach Collaboration

Abstract

James Madison University (JMU) faculty and K-12 teachers founded in 2011 the Shenandoah Valley Nanoscience Outreach Collaboration (SVNOC) effort. The goal of SNVOC is to help K-12 teachers incorporate nanoscience concepts into their classrooms. In this work we present how SVNOC participants use the Nanodays experimental kits to help students understand basic nanotechnology principles such as “How small is small?” Our preliminary results show that for PE the best experiments are the ones that are outside the operating schema of kids so they can stimulate further research. At the HS level, there is a consensus that students need more challenging mathematics that can be extracted from these experimental kits.