OPTIKS: Outreach for Professionals who Teach in Informal Environments and K-12 Schools

OPTIKS, Outreach for Professionals who Teach in Informal Environments and K-12 Schools, is an interactive workshop for industry professionals, graduate students or faculty who are interested in presenting outreach and training others in how to conduct workshops. The paper outlines the components of this class for participants to understand how to develop lessons and activities to engage prospective audiences about optics and photonics science and technology. Key preparation considerations, such as audience and location, are presented alongside formal pedagogical methods to develop highly engaging outreach education activities. The workshop was first implemented at the 2018 SPIE Optics + Photonics congress, and an overview of the delivery is be presented as a case study of this paper. Lessons learned from the initial presentation along with future improvements to this course will also be discussed in this paper.