AMHERST – Morton M. Sternheim of Amherst, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received the National Science Teachers Association award for distinguished service to science education.
Sternheim is currently director of the UMass STEM Education Institute and of the Pioneer Valley STEM Pipeline Network.
He will be honored during a banquet at the 2017 NSTA national meeting in Los Angeles. These awards honor NSTA members who, through active leadership and scholarly work over a significant period of time, have made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of education in the sciences and science teaching.
Some intersting notes IMCO
Helen and Mort Sternheim
Department of Physics
University of Massachusetts Amherst
We began the UMassK12 project in May 1986 with a PC
based
electronic bulletin board (BBS) called the Physics Forum. The project is now
an
Internet service for teachers and students and is in its fifteenth year of
continuous operation. It is the oldest such service in Massachusetts, and
one of
the oldest in the nation.
The original Physics Forum BBS was designed to meet the
needs of physics teachers. Typically there are only one or two physics
teachers
in a high school, and many have minimal formal training in physics. The idea
was
to link them to each other and to the resources of the University. With the
help
of a UMass grant, and using our experience in running bulletin boards for a
computer users group, we set up a system that would allow users to share
ideas
and download teaching materials.
Being a bit naïve, we were surprised when nobody showed
any interest. Teachers didn’t have modems, or telephones in school, or
computers. Furthermore, they didn’t see why they would want to get online.
We
did presentations at MassCUE and other meetings, offered training sessions,
and
wrote articles. At the urging
of
Mary Alice Wilson, the Five Colleges/Public School Partnership Coordinator,
we
broadened our vision to include all teachers. Eventually the idea caught on
and
people began to use the service. MassCUE helped with a grant, and MCET
funded
800 lines for two years.
We also got involved in helping teachers improve their
science teaching with a series of National Science Foundation funded
projects.
In 1989, SpaceMet helped middle school teachers to make science more
engaging
using space science and exploration, and, of course, telecommunications. It
also
funded the expansion of the bulletin boards to the SpaceMet system, four
computers providing local access in the Pioneer Valley. These computers all
shared echomail, which is similar to Internet newsgroups, with each other
and
with a global network of 30,000 “FidoNet” bulletin boards via phone lines.
The State College network also provided connections statewide. Angus “Terry”
Dun, a computer technology teacher at Franklin County Tech, joined us as
Technical Director. 5C5E followed in 1992, showing teachers how to do
environmental research with their students.
By 1992 the Internet had reached the point that
everyone
knew about it and was clamoring to get online, but access was not available
in
much of the state. This was before the web, and a menu-based system called
gopher was fairly new. Text still ruled; there were no graphics, and most
teachers had access only to relatively limited PC’s. A service called
Cleveland FreeNet had developed an easy to use set of menus, and we decided
put
a similar system online based on the FreePort software.
The University donated a DEC workstation, and hired
programmer Matt Kimmel, who had served as a volunteer in the early bulletin
board years while in his mid teens. The software was not designed for the
version of Unix on our computer, but Matt eventually got it run to
reliably.
The original UMassK12 text based system went online in
May
1993. We offered free Internet accounts to all Massachusetts teachers and
their
students. Again we were a bit naïve, but we were surprised in a different
way:
we were inundated by a flood of eager users. Before long we had three
students
setting up accounts. Close to 10,000 accounts were issued overall. We held
almost weekly training workshops on campus, and distributed countless users
manuals. Ultimately the system had as many as 100 simultaneous users, and
response slowed to a crawl. We limited the number of new accounts per school
in
an attempt to slow the growth.
Another problem we had to face was funding. The NSF
grants
were ending, and UMassK12 was too much for volunteers to manage.
Reluctantly, we
began to charge for accounts. This gave us the resources to maintain and
expand
our services to meet whatever the demand might be. Gradually, as other
commercial and education Internet options appeared, our user base
diminished.
However, despite the free or almost free accounts now available to public
school
teachers, we do maintain a core of users who appreciate the kind of service
we
offer.
Soon after the text-based UMassK12 went online, the
World
Wide Web made its appearance. Our users began to clamor for a system that
would
support web browsers as well as graphical mail and news clients. We couldn’t
provide the requisite PPP or Slip connections, but three Amherst Regional
High
School students (Chris Cardé, James Hines, and Joe Kislo) offered to set up
a
Linux based Pentium using a program called Slirp that accomplished the same
purpose. By late 1995 we could offer users a choice of the new UMassK12s or
the
older system, which did not require up to date user hardware. Adam Kramer,
then
a home-schooled high school student in Greenfield, joined us as our Mac user
support expert.
As Y2K approached, we learned that our DEC
workstation’s
operating system and our FreePort software were both noncompliant. Once
again we
turned to talented high school programmers: Dan Gullage and Amos Weatherbee
at
Franklin County Tech. They reverse engineered the software, producing a
similar
looking menu based system with totally new innards. Late in 1999, users were
transferred to the new system, and we waited with curiosity to learn what
would
happen to the old one at midnight on December 31. One more surprise: nothing
happened. It was running just fine when we pulled the plug in March.
At this time, our Internet servers can be reached via
modem
pools in Amherst, Franklin County, and Holyoke. Limited access is also
available
via Westfield State, Mount Holyoke College, and UMass Boston. We offer low
cost
accounts to anyone involve in K12 education. We operate a website open to
everyone with many pointers to educational resources,
http://k12s.phast.umass.edu. Visit us sometime!
A few personal notes: Mort and Helen met in a physics
class
at the City College of New York. She got a degree in electrical engineering
and
went on to break the gender barrier at Curtis Wright Electronics and at
Southern
New England Telephone; she continues to serve as UMassK12 User Service
Director.
Mort got additional degrees in physics from New York University and
Columbia,
coming to UMass after postdocs at Brookhaven National Lab and Yale. He
accepted
early retirement in 1997 from his position as a physics professor, but
continues
on a post-retirement appointment to direct a 21-college NSF funded program
called STEMTEC. It is designed to produce more and better-prepared math and
science teachers.
Terry Dun continues at the Director of Technical Services
and
is also now the Technology Coordinator at Franklin County Tech. Mary Alice
Wilson has retired and is focusing on grandchildren and bird watching. All
our
bright young programmers are now in college studying computer science or are
working as computer professionals.
