With the recently awarded NSF grant, Educational Outreach at NOAO has reached a stable configuration, balancing our efforts between direct classroom involvement (Project ASTRO), teacher enhancement, and the development of instructional materials. More information can be found on the WWW at: http://www.noao.edu/education/noaoeo.html.
NOAO facilities will be used to support The Use of Astronomy in Research Based Science Education, a Teacher Enhancement Program funded through the NSF's Directorate for Education and Human Resources. Suzanne Jacoby, Jeff Lockwood (Sahuaro High School teacher), and Don McCarthy (Univ. of Arizona astronomer) are co-investigators on this four-year project, which offers a research experience to middle and high school teachers during summer workshops beginning in 1997. Participants will experience how science is practiced and develop strategies for paralleling those techniques in their classrooms. The research experience extends to the classroom during the academic year with datasets in preselected areas of astronomical research being provided over the Internet. We are recruiting Tucson teachers for this summer's pilot program and will select teachers from across the nation in subsequent years. This program will be a cornerstone of the NOAO Educational Outreach program, and our user community will be kept informed and involved as the project develops.
Matt Penn and Harry Jones (NSO scientists) received Educational Outreach Supplements to recently awarded science grants in NASA's Sun-Earth Connection program. Harry Jones will be overseeing a three year effort to develop a CD-ROM about the Sun's magnetic cycle to improve student and public understanding of this topic. The CD-ROM will include a day-by-day record of the 22-year solar activity cycle as recorded in magnetograms and He I 1083 nm spectroheliograms at the NSO Kitt Peak Vacuum Telescope. This project funds the return of Michael Gearen (Honolulu Punahou School science teacher); Mike completed a prototype video spanning two years of magnetogram data during his sabbatical last summer.
In collaboration with the UA Media Arts Department, Matt Penn will produce a video about dramatic, short time scale Solar events such as flares and solar oscillations. Observations from ground-based NSO telescopes and the SOHO satellite will be used to illustrate the awesome power and size of astronomical objects. The video product will appeal to a wide range of audiences including high school and undergraduate students, outreach programs for the general public, and public and cable television channels.
Matt has also worked with students from Salpointe High School in Tucson this spring on Blazing Sunspots: a project investigating connections of field lines between members of groups of sunspots with data from the KP/VT telescope. The team of three students won a Grand Award at the Southern Arizona Science and Engineering Fair, giving them full, four-year scholarships to the University of Arizona and a trip to complete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Kentucky in May of 1997. This project involves Richard Siegel (NOAO Outreach Advisory Board teacher) and is seen as an example of successfully bringing astronomical research into the classroom, the type of activity that will be facilitated through the NSF Teacher Enhancement grant.
Visitors from Space - Comets! a color brochure on the comets has been distributed to 300 classrooms in the Southwest and is featured on the NOAO Educational Outreach Web Page. Funded by a 1996 NASA IDEA Grant, the brochure brought timely and accurate information into the classroom to supplement newspaper and television headlines about Comet Hale-Bopp. The Southwestern Consortium of Observatories for Public Education (SCOPE) provided an effective distribution network for the brochures. This inter-observatory group was formed to promote public awareness of astronomy and support science education. SCOPE includes representatives from NSO/SP, Apache Point, McDonald, VLA/NRAO, Whipple, Lowell, and KPNO.
Suzanne Jacoby