NOAO Educational Outreach

The activity level remains high in Educational Outreach with our two major projects, Project ASTRO-Tucson and The Use of Astronomy in Research Based Science Education (RBSE), both having recent workshops. We expect the new position of Outreach Astronomer to be filled by December/January and are preparing for a strong showing at the January AAS meeting in Washington, DC. Recent office shuffling resulted in much of the Outreach staff being moved to Room 3, just south of the main NOAO lobby. Applications for the second year of the RBSE Teacher Enhancement program are available on paper and on-line and must be returned by 27 February 1998.

The second annual Project ASTRO training workshop was held in Tucson in late October, welcoming an additional fifty participants to the project and bringing the total number of trained ASTRO partners in the Tucson area to over one hundred. Astronomers and teachers attend the workshops together and learn hands-on activities and techniques for teaching astronomy in the classroom. Larry and Nancy Lebofsky, Don McCarthy, and representatives from the Tucson Unified School District were among the presenters; Shannon Lalor and Nicole Taddune from the ASP and representatives from the New Mexico Project ASTRO coalition were among the honored attendees. Ginny Beal (gbeal@noao.edu) coordinates Project ASTRO in Tucson.

Ten teachers from Tucson who participated in this summer's Pilot Program of the RBSE Teacher Enhancement program met again at NOAO in October to update the group on efforts to bring a research component to their classrooms and to continue refining methods for analyzing astronomical datasets with the NIH Image software.

The Year-Two RBSE Workshop will take place in July and August of 1998 with 25 middle and high school teachers from around the country coming to Tucson to spend time on Kitt Peak and at the NOAO headquarters. Additional information about the RBSE program has appeared in previous Newsletter articles and can be found off the NOAO Home Page.

Teachers are required to apply as a team of three and must be matched with a local mentor prior to acceptance into the program. Research astronomers who use the NOAO facilities on Kitt Peak should consider becoming mentors. Our understanding of the role of the mentor is evolving as this Pilot Year unfolds, but mentors are not asked to step far from their role as research astronomers in this capacity. As a mentor, you would be on-call to a RBSE teacher, answering questions about the retrieval and content of datasets as well as suggesting research questions that could be addressed with the data provided. You would receive training on implementing classroom research projects and on the overall goals of the RBSE program. Mentors, as well as teachers, receive support from the NOAO Educational Outreach office. Please speak with me at the AAS meeting or contact me at NOAO (sjacoby@noao.edu) to learn more about this opportunity.

Suzanne Jacoby