This is a time of high activity in the Educational Outreach office as we lay groundwork for future programs and continue to develop materials and methods considered effective by our network of teachers. A major effort has been developing "The Use of Astronomy in Research Based Science Education," a proposal for submission to the NSF Teacher Enhancement Program. Updated WWW pages describing the activities of this office are found at URL http://www.noao.edu/education/noaoeo.html.
Excerpts from the preliminary proposal mentioned above are on-line, as is a new classroom activity using Comet Hyakutake data taken with the CWRU Burrell-Schmidt telescope on Kitt Peak. Suzanne Maly, NOAO Outreach Advisory Board member, wrote an exercise that has students measure the motion of the comet relative to the background stars over a series of exposures. Suzanne used the NIH Image software in this lesson and presented the exercise at a recent "Image Processing for Teaching" conference in Orlando, Florida.
Michael Belton's NOAO-based Galileo Imaging Team's IDEA Grant involves "Integrating Space Exploration with Interdisciplinary Curricula at a Tohono O'odham Middle School." Coordinated by Elizabeth Alvarez del Castillo, this group has posted two draft modules at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo/sepo.html#education as part of the Galileo Solid State Imaging (SSI) team's education and public outreach WWW page. "Planets and Satellites" and "Navigating the Solar System" target math classes; additional modules will be appropriate for science, English, and social sciences classes. The teachers at the Tohono O'odham middle school will present this material as an integrated interdisciplinary program during the upcoming academic year.
The IDEA grant coordinated by Suzanne Jacoby supports the development of classroom materials based on "Hot Topics in Astronomy," with the initial focus being comets. The team has met to discuss the desired learning outcomes of this effort, the product content and format, and a timetable for development, evaluation, and distribution of the materials. We have planned for one semester of evaluation by local classrooms before distributing the materials next spring--we'll be ready for Hale-Bopp!
Stop by the NOAO Educational Outreach Office (room 159) on your next visit to Tucson, for sample materials and inspiring conversation. The NOAO EO WWW pages are updated frequently and contain more information on all topics mentioned here.
Suzanne Jacoby , NOAO Education Officer