"The Present and Future of Science Journalism” a talk by Charles Petit

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the plenary session given by Charles Petit, titled “The Present and Future of Science Journalism.”  Charles Petit has been in the scientific writing field for over 40 years.  Former president of the National Association of Science Writers, lead writer for the MIT Knight Science Journalism Tracker and VP for the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, Petit has the accolades and experience to support ANY view on the state of Science Journalism (however depressing that POV may be).  He also has a degree in Astronomy, so we can guess his favorite scientific topic :)

Wobbling between the possible career paths of astronomy, education and science writing, I was interested in what he had to say about the demise of science journalism and the possible future of the field.  He gave an engaging lecture on the common themes of the downturn of newspapers and print media, the difference between press releases and articles, and how scientific discoveries are communicated in the modern era.

Given my personal affinity for the science education, I was drawn to the emphasis that Petit placed upon the difference on science educators and writers.   He offered an anecdote about his experiences, recalling how he was once asked to be on a committee to discuss and offer advice on science education.  As the story goes, he replied something along the lines of “why are you asking me? I’m not an educator.”  He (wisely?) noted that one should “never tell a reporter he’s an educator.”  While reporters and educators both highlight important aspects of science, he reminded us that reporters have no formal education, curriculum development or any experience that makes them qualified as educators.

Yet, what if they did?  What if the next generation of science writers and journalists had educational training that led to not only informative articles, but articles that took into consideration how the average reader could learn about the topics at hand. What if each article was not just a report, but a lesson? What if each article included an inquiry based activity on the page? The possibilities are endless. Maybe the future of journalism wouldn’t be so sad after all.

Greetings from Tucson!

I've had the pleasure of attending the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's National Meeting, "Communicating Science" held in Tucson, AZ throughout August 4-8, 2012.  Over two hundred scientists, educators, writers and others involved in astronomy education and public outreach have gathered together to discuss methods of effectively communicating science, common pitfalls, and the hurdles we face in the futures. 

This past weekend, the ASP held a Galileo Teacher Training Program Workshop, where 40+ teaching professionals and educators gathered together to learn and discuss inquiry-based, hands-on astronomy activities.   It was an awesome group that I was proud to be a part of.

Sunday evening kicked off an event at Flandrau planetarium, before the extremely exciting Curiosity landing on Mars.  It was a wonderful experience to gather around with all of these astronomy lovers to watch the successful landing of Curiosity on Sunday night.  I'm including my favorite photo from Curiosity is below:

(From the JPL site on the Curiosity mission: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/)

I love that you can see the rover's shadow in the photo, as well as the beautifully detailed surface of Mars.  And look at that peak in the distance!  How exciting!  Better yet, these photos are the lowest resolution images that we'll be seeing from Curiosity (this camera is purely intended for looking out for rocks and debris in the path of the rover). Just this morning, the first color images from Curiosity have been taken.   

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are chock-full of exciting lectures, panels and interesting conversation.  Keep checking back for updates on some of the sessions!

Bay Area Project ASTRO Training Workshop

Last weekend, I spent my days at the Bay Area Project ASTRO Training Workshop.  For two full days, 20+ astronomer/teacher pairs came together to learn about some effective techniques and activities that can be used in order to better communicate astronomy to students.  It seemed like most of the participants were working with middle school classrooms, but the program spans grades 3-12.

I've included the blurb from the ASP's website about Project ASTRO:

Project ASTRO™ is a national program that improves the teaching of astronomy and physical science by linking professional and amateur astronomers with local educators. Each astronomer is matched with an educator in a one-on-one partnership and commits to visiting the educator's students at least four times during the school year. Over 500 active educator-astronomer partnerships currently bring the excitement of scientific discovery through astronomy to over 20,000 students annually.

The main focus of Project ASTRO educator-astronomer partnerships is hands-on, inquiry-based activities that put students in the position of acting like scientists - as they come to understand more about the universe (and science in general).

I had known about Project ASTRO from before my internship at the ASP, so it was wonderful to be able to be involved in the training process.  While I had more of a hands-off role on Friday, I helped lead a couple of activities on Saturday.  I talked a little quickly, but luckily I can practice again at our weekend workshop for the Galileo Teachers Training Program!

Will include photos later!

Recent post on the Astronoblog

Check out my post on the Haverford College Astronomy deparment blog, the Astronoblog:

http://news.haverford.edu/blogs/astronoblog/2012/07/30/interning-at-the-astronomical-society-of-the-pacific-miriam-fuchs-13/

Finishing up at the ASP

I've been painfully bad at updating this blog.  At any one time, I'm thinking of three posts that I need to get in before my internship ends this week (!).  Keep checking  back within the week to hear about my most recent work-related happenings.

Currently I am trying to get everything in order before going to the ASP's annual meeting in Tucson, AZ.  The conference's theme is "Communicating Science" and I'll be presenting a poster and making contacts that will hopefully help me get a job post-graduation next May.  I'm really excited for all the lectures and poster sessions.  Just printed up some business cards, and I'm ready to mingle!

Let's Talk About Supenovae!

A couple of weeks ago, I worked at the NASA Summer Art Program at the YMCA in Berkeley, CA, facilitating some fun supernovae activities.  The afternoon started with an interesting ice breaker where students had to go around to different stations and try to figure out the answers to some common astronomy questions.  I was sitting near one of the stations that featured the question "What are sunspots? What do they represent? What causes them?" On the table was a styrofoam sun with a magnet and little staples that actually looked like sunspots.  It was really interesting to see these groups of 14-17 year-olds try to figure out the answers to these questions.  Some students took into account these magnetic models; some tried to figure out the answer by studying the question and some students were hesitant to write down any response to the question that wasn't a 100% right.  It reminded me that the curiosity it takes (and the courage to be wrong) is not something that comes naturally to a lot of students, especially at the high school age.  It reminded me a lot of myself.  It made me to be more involved in programs that really encourage kids that it's okay to be wrong when trying to understand a new concept; scientific understanding is not focused on getting the right answer on the first try, but rather working toward an answer that in the end makes sense to you.  And being wrong on the first try is something that all scientists have experienced.

After the introductory activity, Dr. Jeff Silverman from UC Berkeley gave a short lecture on supernovae.  It was awesome! Definitely one of the best lectures I've heard on the subject; very engaging and great for the audience level.  A theme throughout the summer has been "why can't scientists effectively communicate their science?" -- hearing a scientist so effectively talk about supernovae and his research to a high school class was pretty enlightening.

Then we were on to the fun stuff!  Vivian (also from the ASP) and I went through a couple of activities.  First, she brought along a large poster that went through the life cycle of stars, but sun-like and massive.  It was great seeing such an effective educator in her element.  Then we went on to do a kinesthetic life cycle of stars activity, where the kids mimic the core and outer envelope of stars and the gravitational and fusion pressures within the star, through balancing activities.  We go through each phase of the star from star-forming regions to protostar and so on and then to the death of star in both sun-like and massive stars.

We then went into an activity that mimics core collapse within massive stars using tennis and ping pong balls.  We ended with an activity that goes through all the elements that supernovae provide us!  At the end of the session, the students realize that we would only have stars and gas-planets --no diamond rings, no computers, and no humans!  

We left before the art portion, but they did a lot of cool splatter paint activities that embodied a lot of supernovae-like traits.

Here are some photos from the event:

         

^^ the students acting out a supernova explosion!  Note my excitement on the side :)

^^ an activity that used tennis and ping pong balls to mimic why more massive and less massive particles react different during a supernova.  In a SN, the core is going to contract and become EXTREMELY dense.  The core and the outer layers of the star are going to fall inwards; once the neutrons (formed from the intense packing of protons and electrons at the center of the star) are packed as tightly as they can, the core collapse stops and the material falling inward will "bounce" outwards.  the different layers of a stars during a SN in different ways depending on their mass.  By bouncing a ping pong ball on top of a tennis ball onto the ground, you can see that the tennis ball is going to bounce less (b/c gravity is pulling on it more), while the ping pong ball is going to shoot up, in a similar fashion to less massive particles.  This is a simplified model, but shows how gravity is important in a SN and how different particles are going to react differently throughout this stellar process.

 ^^ what do SN give us activity?  I'll ruin the punch line: US!  We wouldn't be alive without supernovae!  The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones -- all thanks to the deaths of super massive stars!

SETIcon II: Where science and imagination meet!

Last month I worked at the SETI Institute’s SETICon II: where science and imagination meet! It was a fun convention hosted by the SETI Institute that brought together a lot of interesting people.  I helped out at the Lick Observatory Booth and presented an activity and some iPad apps on exoplanets and how to find them.  The activity was very easy to understand and included a model demonstration of the wobble method (Doppler spectrocscopy) and the transit method.

Here’s  a demonstration video by the wonderful Suzy Gurton.  It's titled "How Do We Find Planets?" and can be find on the Night Sky Network list of activities:

Throughout the day, I also showed off the Kepler and Exoplanets apps.  I ended up chatting with Dr. Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation (!), who was presenting at one of the panels later on at the convention.  It was definitely a starstruck moment (pun intended).  I remember attending an astronomy class at a college I visited during high school, and during that lecture we went over the Drake equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) and the notion of intelligent life in our Universe.  It was pretty full circle when I showed him and his wife the apps, and had a discussion about how I got into astronomy.  Both lovely people, and I had a great time talking it up with them.  I’ve included some photos below: