Using nanotechnology to illustrate concepts at the secondary school level

Although nanotechnology is beginning to permeate many aspects of modern society, most people have only a limited awareness of these advances. Here we describe a program in which nanotechnology is used as a vehicle to communicate basic ideas of nanoscale phenomena and materials at the secondary school level. Secondary school teachers from the SESO K-12 school in Mayaguez Puerto Rico participated in a summer nanotechnology workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they learned basic aspects of nanotechnology through tutorials and laboratory participation, and developed teaching modules and lesson plans. These materials were incorporated into the curriculum at SESO. We discuss the organization and evaluation of the workshop at UW-Madison, and the implementation and evaluation of the nanotechnology modules at SESO.