Galileo Teacher Training Program Workshop – Day One September 14, 2009
Posted by astroed in Astronomy.Tags: Astronomy, galileo, Galileoscope, IYA
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I’m in San Francisco for the ASP’s Annual Meeting on astronomy education and outreach. Prior to the three-day meeting I’m participating in a 1 1/2 day workshop for teachers, one of the first Galileo Teacher Training Program (GTTP) workshops held in the US. The workshop participants are mostly school teachers, some at elementary (primary), some middle school and some at high school. A few teach at community colleges then there were also a few of us astro ed professionals or spies as we were introduced as.
The day one presenters were a highly experienced bunch; Dennis Schatz from the Pacific Science Center, Andrew Fraknoi from the ASP and Foothill College and Rob Sparks from NOAO (read his blog here). Andrew started with and icebreaker activity where we all introduced ourselves then gave us an intro to Galileo followed by an overview of the realms of the Universe, working out from the Solar System to the Milky Way then beyond. We then tackled a fun activity: Bill Gates’ Great Great Grand-daughter’s Honeymoon Trip” 10 Tourist Wonders of the Solar System. Lots of discussion about the best tourist sites in the Solar System.
Dennis Schatz demonstrating apparent orbits of Moon and Sun around Earth.
Dennis then gave asession on elements of effective instruction. He showed a segment from the influential film A Private Universe highlighting misconceptions by Harvard graduating students, faculty and alumni and with school students. He stressed the importance of identifying students’ preconceptions, using advance disornaizers, and analogies. Connect into real-world experiences, embed on-going assessment experiences and encourage them to reflect on their understanding with others. After morning tea Dennis continued with a session on modelling lunar phases. I found his demonstration using hula hoops of why eclipses don’t occur each month really handy and one I will try to use from now on.
After lunch Andrew introduced an activity for students to replicate Galileo’s observations of the moons of Jupiter then Dennis showed how to build a starwheel and use it within a classroom with constellation images on butchers paper on classroom walls, another great idea.
Using laser levellers and a vellum screen.
The final part of the day was presented by Rob Sparks. Every participant received their own Galileoscope! Rob showed us some effective optics demonstrations using large lenses, vellum screens and laser levellers. Spray fog reveals laser beams clearly as you can see in the photo below. We used the new construction instructions available from the Galileoscope website to build our scopes. Along the way we were able to measure the focal length of the 50mm f/10 objective lens. It was interesting to compare the difference between the 4-element eyepiece and the two-element Galilean eyepiece. The narrow field-of-view of the Galielan eyepiece makes you appreciate his skill as an observer.
Laser light rays visible via spray fog. Note the focal length of the lens.
Overall it was a really useful and stimulating day! Lots of ideas and activities for me to incorporate into my workshops back home.
Workshop participants; proud owners of new Galileoscopes. Tam Huynh from Evergreen Elementary School on left
Brisbane Planetarium and IYA August 31, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education.Tags: IYA
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On Friday morning I flew to Brisbane. The main reason for my trip was to help run the Mission Astronomy teacher workshop at the University of Southern Queensland but you’ll have to read a later blog posting for details about that. Before going to Toowoomba for the workshop I participated in a meeting at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium in the grounds of the Botannical Gardens in Brisbane. This was my first visit to the planetarium and I was impressed by the design of the building as well as the lovely setting in the gardens.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the International Year of Astronomy 2009 with interested stakeholders from Queensland. It was a productive meeting with representatives from several amatur socieities, the planetarium, the Science Teachers’ Association of Queensland, universities and the Queensland Museum. Following an overview of IYA then how it is structured and what is already planned for IYA in Australia we had a lengthy discussion about possible events and activities in Queensland. I llok forward to following up ideas with the group over coming months.
Near the entrance to the planetarium is an engaging new addition – a bronze statue of rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, donated to Brisbane last year by a Russian trade delegation. It is almost whmsical but also quite touching.
Before our meeting we had a chance to see the planetarium in action. It still uses a Zeiss optical projector plus a newer digital one. The 12.4 m dome seats about 120 people and hosts up to several shows a day. They have an active education program and the place certainly seemed buzzing with enthusisatic school students during my visit.
