[Editors] MIT launches web site for high school students

[Patti Richards]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Contact: Patti Richards
t. 617-253-8923; prichards at mit.edu

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MIT launches web site for high school students

Will use successful MIT OpenCourseWare model to engage high school 
math and science students and faculty
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 28, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - MIT President Susan Hockfield today announced the 
launch of a new website, Highlights for High School 
(http://ocw.mit.edu/highschool), that will provide resources to 
improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) instruction 
at the high school level.

The website builds on the success of MIT's revolutionary 
OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, launched in 2001 with the goal of 
making all MIT course materials available for free over the World 
Wide Web. It is designed to help inspire the next generation of 
engineers and scientists and to be a valuable tool for high school 
teachers.

"Strength in K-12 math and science will be increasingly important for 
America if the nation is to continue to lead in today's innovation 
economy," said MIT President Susan Hockfield. "Highlights for High 
School will provide students and teachers with innovative tools to 
supplement their math and science studies.  We hope it will inspire 
students to reach beyond their required classwork to explore more 
advanced material and might also encourage them to pursue careers in 
science and engineering."

Highlights for High School features more than 2,600 video and audio 
clips, animations, lecture notes and assignments taken from actual 
MIT courses, and categorizes them to match the Advanced Placement 
physics, biology and calculus curricula. Demonstrations, simulations, 
animations and videos give educators engaging ways to present STEM 
concepts, while videos illustrate MIT's hands-on approach to the 
teaching of these subjects.

Thomas Magnanti, former dean of the School of Engineering at MIT, 
chaired the committee that developed the site. "As has been well 
documented the U.S. needs to invest more in secondary education, 
particularly in STEM fields. MIT as a leading institution of science 
and technology has an obligation to help address the issue," he said.

Highlights for High School represents MIT's first step in adapting 
the successful OpenCourseWare model to secondary education. The 
website organizes the course materials currently featured on 
OCW-including 1,800 syllabi, 15,000 lecture notes, 9,000 assignments 
and 900 exams-into a format that is more accessible to high school 
students and teachers.

An estimated 10,000 U.S. high school instructors and 5,000 U.S. high 
school students already visit MIT OpenCourseWare each month, and MIT 
expects Highlights for High School to make MIT's course materials 
even more useful to these audiences.

Highlights for High School continues MIT's tradition of supporting 
science, technology and engineering instruction at the secondary 
level. One of the most prominent previous efforts was PSSC Physics 
(http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/pssc/), a program begun 
in 1956 as a collaboration between MIT physics professors and high 
school physics teachers, which dramatically changed the way physics 
was taught in high schools.

MIT currently has over 40 K-12 outreach programs, including the 
Edgerton Center (http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/), MIT's Minority 
Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) 
(http://www.broad.mit.edu/diversity/mites.html) and MIT's Educational 
Studies Program (ESP).

A broader MIT plan proposed for a secondary education program - OCW 
SE -may include creating a teacher in residence program to develop 
new open curricula with high school educators and organizing an MIT 
secondary education mentor corps.

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