Move over Steven Spielberg, JILAns help Lafayette fourth graders create computer-based documentaries on the workings of electrical circuits.

Friday, Nov. 30, 2007; 1:30 p.m. JILA Hour is about to begin for Lafayette Elementary’s fourth graders. Both anticipation and agitation reign in teacher Caleb Melamed’s classroom.

"Can you hear me, one?" Melamed asks, sotto voce. A few kids raise their hand, extending one finger up. "Can you hear me, two?" Half the class responds, extending two fingers up. "Can you hear me, three?" Now the entire class is seated and all hands are raised, three fingers extended up.

"OK, get into your groups,” he says. “The JILA people are here."

For the next 60 minutes, it’s show time for Outreach Director Laurel Mayhew and JILA graduate student volunteers Lauren Kost, Zach Smith, and Sam Taylor. Equipped with six video-camera-equipped laptops and some stop-action motion software, they help six groups of fourth graders create their own documentaries showing the difference between parallel and series electrical circuits and telling why and how they work.

This hour is one of many these team members have devoted to helping kids learn the basics of physics. They’re doing it as part of a Physics Frontier Center (PFC)/Physics Education Research Group-funded outreach program that strives to fulfill JILA’s mission to share the Institute’s work with young students and help them understand and appreciate the role of physics in their daily lives.

Toward that end, Mayhew is tasked with developing synergistic partnerships with local K-12 schools that serve underrepresented populations.

The benefits of this effort go beyond the obvious.

"One of the things we’re able to study with the fourth graders is what happens when we bring new technology into the classroom. They have fun learning it, and then we can use it to measure what they know about the science they’ve recently learned," she says.

Using technology to measure knowledge is an innovation that Mayhew says gives the program a leg up with kids. "Normally you would give them an exam. The way we do it, with computers and stop-action-motion video, we're able to ask them ‘What do you know about this?' and they can tell us directly in a fun way."

The payoff is immediate. "Kids say to me, 'Oh, that was really cool. When are you coming back?' " Mayhew says.

Currently, local schools participating in the outreach program include Lafayette Elementary and Boulder Preparatory Charter School, a Boulder Valley School District high school for at-risk teens.

The program also is partnering with a housing project-based outreach effort in San Diego. There, Mayhew et al. are collaborating with the communications department at the University of California at San Diego to bring physics to kids aged six to 18 via videoconferencing.

"We've developed a variable curriculum for this collaboration so, depending on who shows up on a certain day, we can modify it on the fly," she says. Generally, it follows the same model Mayhew uses in local schools. It includes making predictions, doing PhET (Physics Education Technology) computer simulations, and mastering a challenge.

"We say, 'OK, you say you've learned this, can you make a movie about it?"

Mayhew says that if the videoconferencing outreach model is successful, it will give JILAns the opportunity to teach kids all over the mountain west — from as close as Longmont to as far away as the Western Slope and Montana.

Ultimately, Mayhew's hope is that outreach will become part and parcel of JILA’s institutional identity. "It's important and necessary to be connected to the community outside JILA. Our commitment to K-12 education means that graduate students have the opportunity to leave the tower and interact with the outside world," Mayhew says. "It would be great if reaching out to the community became part of what it means to be a JILA scientist." —Nancy Nachman-Hunt

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