Currently I’m in Nantes, France attending the joint Division of Planetary Sciences meeting ( DPS is a part of the American Astronomical Society) and the European Planetary Science Conference. As part of this week-long science extravaganza, there was a session on educational programs that make a global impact. I talked about citizen science (1, 2), and otherwise got to sit back and hear about other projects, many of which are children of the International Year of Astronomy that were able to grow and continue to thrive.

From TWAN: Starry Sky of an Alien Lake by Wally Pacholka

The session started with Mike Simmons of Astronomers without Borders. While Mike and his network date back to before IYA, they really came into their own during IYA with the coordination of 100 Hours of Astronomy. During a few brief spring (North) or fall (South) days, his team succeeded in brining together the world’s population in one global star party. IYA taught all of us that trying to engage the entire planet in one 100-hour span is hard work, and some people are guaranteed to be busy, so in recent years the program has transformed into the Global Astronomy Month, which invites everyone to look up during April. Different weeks and weekends have different themes. Beyond this amazing project, Astronomers without Borders also maintains The World at Night (photo project) and is planning global events for this June’s Transit of Venus. Poor Mike did all he could to pack it all into his 10-minute time slot, but it was to no avail. He was chased off the podium 3-minutes over. Honestly, his programs needed 55 minutes to do them any justice at all.

From Mike it passed to Roger Ferlet and Hand on Universe – EU. This project takes many of the best online / digital astronomy ideas of the past 15 years and does them using real NASA data processed using an interface called SalsaJ. Imagine, instead of using a simulator like CLEA to study the motion of Jupiter’s moons or the pulsations of a star you just looked at Jupiter’s moons and an actual pulsating star. SalsaJ is now on my list of things to learn sooner rather than later, and I’m hoping that if any of you are classroom teachers using SalsaJ, you’ll leave a comment about how you like it.
I went third and then passed the stage off to Connie Walker of the Dark Skies Awareness initiative (They do regular 365 Days of Astronomy shows!). These are the folks that every year bring you Globe at Night, a global data gathering project to measure how light pollution is impacting our ability to see the stars (and galaxies, etc) in the sky above us. In the past, this has been a once a year event involving getting everyone around the globe to look at the equator riding constellation Orion. Students and members of the public turn in information on how many of his stars they could see compared to a series of images, and we get a global reading of the sky. The thing is, lots of weird things can effect light pollution. Snow for instance. If you have a lot of street lights politely pointed down onto grass in parks, that isn’t too horribly bad, but if those same lights point onto snow… Well, that’s a nice mirror of light reflected into the sky. This year, to look at variations, and to see who can participate when, they’re introducing 4 different Globe at Nights events: January 14-23, February 12-21, March 13-22, and April 11-20 (that’s 2012).

With a line up of special events defined for us, the podium (or lack of podium) was handed over to Rosa Doren, a woman who is a force of nature bent on improving teacher preparation on a global level. Working on a budget of sofa change and sidewalk dimes, she has shown us what it means to leverage existing resources. As head of the IYA’s Galileo Teacher Training Program (which is still going strong!), she has brought together a global collaboration of people who are doing teacher training and providing teachers astronomy certification (at a variety of levels) by engaging them in a collections of activities in different content areas. The thing that consistently impresses me about this project is it realizes that schools aren’t all the same in terms of resources, but the same concepts of wanting to engage people rather then lecture at people apply. Don’t have a computer? That’s ok – they have a plan. Have a telescope and the most modern of technologies? That’s fine too. The sets of possible things teachers can do is varied enough to recognize the vast diversity of classroom needs, allowing teachers to learn concepts through tasks matched to their resources. Are you a teacher? Want to get the leg up on your astronomy content in a way that is relevant to the classroom you have instead of the classroom you wish you had? Check out the global listing of teacher workshops on their website.

Algol, the Demon of the Sky by EU-UNAWE Spain

The final talk I listened to well was on a classroom project I know I’ve mentioned before: Universal Awareness (UNAWE). Lead by Pedro Russo (formerly lead by Carolina Odman who’s no doing different awesomeness), and presented by a nice younger fellow whose name I didn’t catch, this program is designed to get little kids to love and learn space science through story telling. On their resources page they have a myriad of activities (including signing activities and telescope activities!), artwork from stories telling sky-lore from many different cultures, and all the teacher resources you might want (as a non-teacher, I like to download and print the art). Editions are available in multiple languages. The story that I heard (not told today, sadly) that most made me love this project was actually a story on it’s cultural impact. Through one set of activities, they get the kids telling their stories to a visiting outer space alien (a doll sewn by one of the community parents), and the alien in turn tells the kids stories about space through this curriculum. One teacher reported that after doing UNAWE in her class, an transfer student from a foreign country was seen as an interesting new thing – a source of potential stories and friendship. This was in contrast to how her kids normally treated transfer kids, as well, aliens in the not so warm and fuzzy story telling sense.

So the reason I said “listen well” is today I also learned I’m not really all that compatible with French food. I’m fine, but for a while, sitting a bit dehydrated (beverages are primarily expresso and wine here), and way overheated (no or limited AC and in the 80s), I just decided that rather than listening closely, I’d turn a color that caused a worried friend to ask if I was ok. After the session, I grabbed a couple cans of soda (failing to find hot tea, which I now have), and got to feeling better slowly but surely. I’m now fine, but during a few of the talks I wasn’t listening as much as I was doing a mental inventory of things like water bottles and tea bags I will hence forth always a) bring, and b) not leave on the plane (as I did with my water bottle on Saturday).

Unfortunately, this means the best I can do is offer you a link to the program for the rest of the session. No fear though, Thursday is another education session, and next week I’ll be at an astronomy communications meeting in Beijing (where I am compatible with the food). I’ll report what I hear. And tomorrow (room space willing) I’ll try and get you some science. So far, I fear to say, I’ve been thwarted by rooms with more people than space. Ah well, Emily Lakdawalla is early to arrive and easy to fit into small spaces and keeps managing to fit nicely into all the coolest sessions. Follow her on twitter and the Planetary Society Blog for all the best science this meeting has to offer.

Watch the Stars – Light the Night [buy tickets here]

When: Thursday, September 2, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Emory Math & Science Center, 400 Dowman Dr., Atlanta, GA 30322
Proceeds to go to Light the Night – the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Dragon*Con [buy tickets here]

When: Friday, September 3 through Monday, September  6, 2010
Where: Atlanta Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, AND Sheraton
NB I have yet to attend a Dragon*Con where my schedule exactly matched what I got the week before the con, so be prepared for changes!
Don’t forget to check out our fan table in the Hilton! We’ll have T-Shirts for sale!

• Title: Space Trivia!
  Description: Do you know a lot about space & astronomy? Are you good with trivia? Think you know more than our experts? Here’s where you can test your knowledge!
  Time: Fri 07:00 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
• Title: Mystery of Hanny’s Voorwerp
  Description: Who’s Hanny? What’s a Voorwerp? How’s Hubble involved? See the World Release of the webcomic that explains it all & the 1st Hubble images.
  Time: Fri 10:00 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: until we’re done )
• Title: The 2010 Parsec Awards
  Description: The Parsec Award is available for original Sci-Fi & Fantasy & Speculative Fiction within the new frontiers of Portable Media.
  Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Regency V – Hyatt (Length: 2.5 Hours)
• Title: Astronomy Cast Live!
  Description: Take a facts-based journey through the cosmos with Dr. Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain
  Time: Sun 01:00 pm Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
• Title: Skepticism and Education
  Description: JREF now has a Director of Educational Programs – what else is being done out there and how can skeptics help educate the next generation?
  Time: Sun 04:00 pm Location: 207 / 206 / 205 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
• Title: Your Daughter Can Too
  Description: These women have successful careers in engineering & science.  They can tell you how to help your daughters do the same.
  Time: Mon 10:00 am Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)

One of the great things about being part of the dynamic team that is building IYA is getting to see this project grow and evolve. Today IYA announced the hiring of their  core staff, and guess what: I’m part of it. In a press release issued by the IYA co-chairs, Doug Isbell and Susana Deustua, the United States IYA program announced the hiring of Steve Pompae as the US Program Director and the Andrea Schweitzer and Kristina Harding as the Project Manager and her assistant (think super hero side kick). I’ll be the IYA Web Developer (like you couldn’t have guessed that).

In addition to these staff hirers (which don’t really effect your day to day lives), people are gearing up their activities in preparation for the big kick off. In some cases, this includes lots of paperwork flying around as projects are defined. In other cases, this  includes tools getting upgraded and updated.

One such tool is FITsLiberator.  Back in the old days, I used to go to terrible pains to try and take my nice science images and turn them into pretty pictures (I’m on the wrong computer to share). It required getting everything just so in IRAF and then printing to file, and then layering in Photoshop, and much ftping between my Sun SparcStation and my Windows PC (these were the press OS X days). Then NRAO came out with FITSview, and I could at least get things from FITS to photoshop all using 1 computer. (WOOT!) But… But it was still a serious pain. Until one magical day when the ESO announced the creation of FITS Liberator, a plug-in for Photoshop that allows images to be directly imported into Photoshop. That’s right – process your images on the system of your choice, and you can go from FITS to pretty image in one software package.

The problem is, if you are like me and use an Intel Mac, FITS Liberator didn’t quite work unless you use Rosetta mode. I have to admit that rather then figure out what that is or how to access whatever it is, I’ve been pulling out my old PowerBook G4 laptop (the one I own, versus the ones my grants provide) whenever I need to make pretty images. This week, however, my need to pull out my old CPU has been shelved.  The wonderful team from NASA/ESA/ESO have released version 2.2 with a universal binary!

In addition to happily running on my MacBookPro (and Vista), this software also includes support for the new VAMP metadata. This new, but very little known, fledgling metadata for images is something that will hopefully make it possible to quickly and easily find images of specific wavelengths, sizes, and qualities. The IYA Cornerstone Project, “The Portal to the Universe,” will even let you index your images using their website and this metadata. Getting VAMP metadata into FITSliberator is a first step. It is an important step. And it is a step that makes my MacBookPro feel a bit more complete.

One tool at a time, IYA is becoming real.

These random student questions can lead the class on wild rides (and I love rollercoasters). They give me a chance to answer a lot of questions involving space, astronomy, and spacecraft in my physics classes as we stray off topic into the realm of “what if?” There are also days when we get into discussions on all the ways you can destroy things, accelerate things, or (one of my favorite topics) design more frightening rollercoasters. This isn’t to say there aren’t also days when I say with a sigh, “I’m really sorry, but I need to at least get through some of [insert less interesting topic here] so you’ll get what you need out of the class.” Those days happen. There are also days when my students ask me questions I just can’t answer on topics like chemistry, particle physics, electronics (it’s all magic – when you see smoke, that’s the magic escaping), or even sometimes astronomy. I’ve learned that it’s okay to say, “Let me look it up,” or “email me so I can find someone who knows.” Students understand that we can’t know everything, and as long as I try and I’m honest, a good classroom dynamic seems to follow.

And I’m guessing I’m not the only teacher who has these days, and enjoys their students’ questions (even when they can’t answer them all). With Astronomy Cast, we’ve decided that we want to be a part of helping high school teachers  get their students questioning by putting ourselves out there as folks willing to answer questions.

And if you’re a school teacher, I’d love it if you’d email us so we can get you involved.

Here’s what’s going on: Inspired by the success of our “Questions Shows,” Astronomy Cast is creating a “Student Questions” series. These shows will answer a selection of student questions, emphasizing questions related to high-energy astrophysics, in 30-minute podcasts. High-energy astrophysics studies some of the most energetic and exotic objects in the Universe, including: supermassive black holes and their jets of charged particles, exploding stars, and city-sized neutron stars spinning thousands of times per second. Each show will eventually have an illustrated transcript, and questions will also be indexed online by topic. Submitted questions not used in shows will still be answered, but will only appear in the online index. To facilitate educators submitting audio questions, Astronomy Cast can provide recording devices that can be shipped on loan to schools at no cost to them (return postage provided). Teachers are also free to use any existing equipment their school has to send us audio. This program is sponsored by NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope Education and Public Outreach program.

Interested? To find out how to apply, download the front and back of this flier. If you’re a teacher, drop Astronomy Cast an email at info at astronomycast dot com, or email me at pamela at starstryder dot com. Also, feel free to give a copy of the front and back of that flier to your favorite teen’s high school teacher.

The more the merrier (and the more fun this podcast series will be). Get your kid(s) asking questions, and I’ll be here with Fraser, doing my best to get them answers.

(And tomorrow, I’ll talk about something more astronomical)

Another day, another conference. From Dragon*Con, I crossed half-way across the country to Chicago to attend the 119th Meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on “EPO and a Changing World.” This morning I’m sitting in a session presented by astronaut George “Pinky” Nelson (the astronaut who repaired Solar Max) on things that need to happen for education to be made more effective. He is focusing largely (and I feel correctly) on the need to support our teachers by providing them training, content, and infrastructure.

Intriguing comment of the day: “We should only teach a geometric explanation of the lunar phases. Let’s pick a grade, say 5th grade, and only teach the lunar phases there. Think about multiplication of 2-digit numbers – they do that in the 3rd grade. Let’s teach lunar phases in 5th grade.” This particular comment caught my attention because I am personally annoyed at how much time in astronomy classes in all grades are spent learning lunar phases. The cosmos is a huge place with lots of amazing detail waiting to be learned. Let’s move beyond celestial motions and lunar phases to study the stars themselves and the universe of galaxies they orbit within.

Throughout his talk, Nelson stressed that we need to train educators in both teaching strategies based on how people learn and we need to train them in the content. We do a fairly good job providing them with training in pedagogy, but if you look at the standard elementary-education curriculum, the amount of content in specific subjects is very limited. Once their initial college education is complete, teachers must continue learning on their own and through continuing education programs. That alone, however, isn’t enough. When we give them course materials, we can’t expect them simply know how to teach what we give them, but instead we need to provide them all the background material as well. In an example, he (using his hands) indicated that the student materials for one particular activity is only 1inch (~2.5 cm) thick, while the teacher material is more like a 8 inches (~20cm) thick. This teacher packet saves the teacher from needing to spend time googling and in the library and pre-vets the good materials and puts it straight into the hands of the people who need it most.

We also need to rethink how we are teaching our teachers. We can’t stick them in general lecture-based, giant survey courses in science and expect them to learn what they need to learn to effectively teach astronomy or any other science. This is a two-fold problem. 1) Lecture isn’t an effective way to teach anyone anything – we learn best in cooperative learning environments where people learn by doing and discussing, and I suspect most lecturers will yell at classroom members who are doing or discussing while lecture is in progress. This stifles learning. 2) Elementary school classrooms do use activity-based learning, and if we teach teachers using lectures and expect them to use activities, we aren’t teaching them by example. This is very disconnected. By teaching teachers using activities, discussions, and small amounts of lecture (you can’t get away from it entirely), we can teach them more effectively, and give them examples of things they can do in their classrooms.

As the EPO community puts on our weekend workshops and our outreach materials, we need to put all these pieces together. This website certainly isn’t there – a blog is very much a lecture, although the comment role seems to do a good job encouraging “after class” dialogue. Astronomy Cast is in the same boat. This talk directly challenged people like me to find ways to encourage people like you to not just “listen” to content, but to also reach out and regularly do astronomy through projects like Galaxy Zoo.

Good speakers can be problematic: they leave me wishing I had more time to do more.

My Space Physics students, in addition to several students who are part of the SIUE physics club, all built rockets. Many of these rockets were of their own design, incorporating objects as odd as Budweiser cans and toilet paper (as well as toilet paper rolls). The rockets didn’t all behave in the most predictable of ways. The “Finless Wonder,” a rocket without any fins, flew a wild course that threatened to set us all on fire (never kneel on the hem of your jacket to keep warm during a rocket launch – it is impossible to not get tangled while attempting to run out of harms way!). A rocket with carefully angled fins corkscrewed its way skyward on multiple launches. An egg-craft protected its fragile cargo on two trips (one through the trees). Through out the experience, the students were talking about what might go wrong (discussions based on science), bemoaning the cancelled shuttle launch (which a couple had gone out of their way to try and watch), and overall laughing and plotting to repeat the experience next semester.

I just sat back, packed engins with ignitors, and enjoyed my students’ pleasure using knowledge to have fun. It doesn’t get better than this.

To see pictures, check out the album on my Facebook. SIUE network members can view even more pictures by visiting the group “The Physics Club.”

The delightful Chad Morelli from the Suburban Journals spent the afternoon with all of us, taking great photographs of the day. You can find his story here.