Welcome to the Hands-On Universe (HOU) Standalone Course. Here you will find many resources to help you use Hands-On Universe in your classroom. This material can be used by teachers, students, and others to understand the science, math, and technology involved with HOU.

To jump right in without the intro, select your link below:

A bit of an introductionteacher_course.

The course is broken up into two sections, HOU101 and HOU 201. HOU101 contains all of the introductory material needed by first year HOU teachers to begin implementing HOU in their classrooms. HOU 201 contains material for teachers who are ready to take it a step further. Traditionally, HOU workshops have been held for two consecutive summers in order to provide teachers a chance to learn the material, implement the curriculum, and then come back to learn more. Some teachers have taken HOU workshops 3 or more summers in a row. The standalone course tries to emulate that kind of ongoing support.

The standalone course includes

• Content pages for many HOU topic areas
• Associated curriculum activities
• Technical hints to get you through potential stumbling blocks
• Self-Check Quizzes to see how you are doing
• Links to online course assignments for Course Credit participants.

The red buttons on the top navigation bar will take you to the index pages of the various components of the course. The blue buttons will take you outside this site to the WebCT coursesite or to the main HOU program website.

Light green buttons within the content pages take you directly to pages or elements associated with a specific content page. For instance,

The and buttons will allow you go advance and go backwards through the content pages.

The button will link to HOU curriculum activities (usually from the HOU booklets) that are associated with content on the page being viewed, if available.

The button will link to specific technical hints needed for material on the content page being viewedteacher_course

The button will link to a self-test on the content for the page or a series of previous pages, when available. These self-tests are for personal use and do not affect grades for those taking the course for credit.

The button is for those who are taking the HOU course for credit. This will link to an area with assignments and exams that are graded by HOU Teacher Resource Agents. This part of the course is password protected and you must enroll through the HOU homepage to have access.

Select the link below to go to the course you are ready to begin (if you have doubts, then you probably want HOU 101).