SBIR-STTR Award

The application proposes to engage in teacher education workshops focussing on issues pertaining to drug abuse particularly the neurobiology thereof. Workshops will be provided for teachers from experts in the field. Our main goal in this science education project is to impart useful knowledge and information to teachers of grades 7 -12. In an era of declining education budgets, teachers are rarely given the opportunity for continuing their own education in this critical subject area. It follows that unless they choose to do so of their own accord, their understanding will lag behind scientific understanding. It is of utmost importance to equip our teachers with knowledge and support in subject areas relating to drug abuse. We propose to bring this knowledge to teachers, who, by virtue of their profession, are at the front line of drug abuse. We will do so by engaging teachers at no expense to themselves, in workshop to be conductedby recognized experts from the scientific community.

Thesaurus Terms:
drug abuse education, method development, neurobiology, science education, workshopNational Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Drug abuse may be the single most destructive element in American society today. In order to alleviate the problem, prevention education will need to be more readily available and more effective so that the goals set forth by NID and other national agencies can be met. Teenagers are the one segment of the population which are both a) high risk age group for substance abuse, and b) can be educated and influenced to stay away from drugs, if they can be made to understand the devastation that drug abuse will wreak on their brains, their live, their families -- and their social and cultural environment. New innovations in computer technology provide exciting possibilities to develop software for young people to discover for themselves the most recent advances in the area of substance abuse. Our teenagers need information and guidance. We will create a multimedia CD-ROM targeted particularly for High School students, but of benefit to others as well. We will provide this information in a way that is both engaging and educational. We will synthesize the leading research findings in the neurology and neurobiology of substance abuse from a variety of sources, and, working in conjunction with neuroscientist as technical consultant, we will deliver this information in a computer- based, multimedia-format series of electronic lesson that will be mastered onto a user-friendly CD-ROM, and delivered on both major personal computer platforms used in schools and homes in the United States today: Macintosh and PC.