"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.": NASA explorer schools summer research experience

This blog has been a long time in the works, sitting as a word file on my desktop being modified little by little for many months, yet with recent news that the national budget cuts are going to have an impact on NASA's outreach and education I thought now is a good a time as ever to get this thing finished and posted. With that said, I’m not exactly sure how all of the changes are going to go down yet, it kind of seems like the goal of streamlining/eliminating overlap sounds good, but the execution is not exactly clear yet. Nevertheless, I'm hoping for the best.

My NASA Explorer Schools (NES) summer research experience actually started at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year when I was part of an online training to learn how to us the NES virtual campus. (Sidenote: If you're a science teacher, you should be part of NASA explorer schools... I hope you agree by the time you're don reading this!) I spent lots of time exploring and used a ton of NES resources in my classroom, including NASA Now videos and lesson plans. My favorite lesson plan is Transit Tracks, where the students analyze graphs of Kepler Telescope data to determine the orbital period and size of extrasolar planets. In March, the application for teacher recognition was available, and on April 11th, I found out I'd be spending a week in July in Baltimore at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins. The "More to Light than Meets the Eye" workshop was my first choice, so I was beyond excited. I spent the whole summer looking forward to my trip.

My flight to Baltimore was early in the morning, and I was one of the first to arrive. I picked up one of the rental cars and another attendee, Diana, who had arrived from Puerto Rico. We found our way to the hotel, which was really nice, and right across the street from Johns Hopkins, where the Space Telescope Science Institute is located. In the evening, we all met up for the first time for a fabulous Italian dinner and lots of fun!

We met each other and our wonderful NES leader, Jordan. I was seriously amazed by the amazing group of educators NES was able to pull together, and I knew we were going to have a ton of fun learning together for the next few days.

Day one started bright and early with a full day at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Here’s the whole group ready to start the day!

Here I am checking in and probably geeking out about something already…. I think maybe I was telling the person at the check in table that the picture on the wall would look really nice in my classroom. :)

We spent the day learning about Hubble, James Webb, different types of light, infrared light, and stellar spectra. Here are some cold hands in infrared!

Though I knew most of the basics already, it was really cool to learn all about the plans for James Webb years before it even launches, and it’s also always fun to see these topics from a student point of view.

Day two

Our second day ran from 9:30-4:00 as well and I don’t think I’ve ever had my brain quite as full as it was by the end of our second day. More presentations, more activities… lots of fun! We learned about the search for exoplanets, we did a Hubble Deep Field activity (which I actually just did in my class with my students a few weeks ago!) and about World Wide Telescope. Here’s a photo of me looking real serious about analyzing galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field.

Absolutely everything was fun, but I think the most fun was learning about the science from the people who are actually doing the science. I’m so appreciative that they took their time to talk to us, and many of them seemed to appreciate that we were there! What’s even cooler though, is that I’ve seen a few of the people who presented to us on twitter, at the AAS in Long Beach and even as writers for articles in Astronomy magazine. How cool, right?? Not only did we get to spend the day at STSci, we got to take a trip to the Inner Harbor to play in the science center for a few hours.

Me and a tornado!

T-Rex.

MY GIRL FRIZZLE.

keep an eye on that suit on the left….

I’M IN SPACE, Y’ALL.

keep an eye on that helmet…

Mars Group photo!

True story: the COOLEST people work at the Maryland Science Center.

Story of my life.

Day three was our day to go to Goddard! I was really really excited about everything… as you can probably tell from the photos. I decided after being at Goddard, I really want to try to visit all the NASA centers eventually. I’ll be going to JPL this summer, and I’m hoping to get to Houston really soon ;)

Learning about exoplanets with Jordan, the best ever NASA explorer schools guide!

I’m driving around NASA Goddard. Pretty sure the people in the car with me were happy when we made it without me driving off the road from sheer excitement.

I just drove here. I just parked here.

Tweeting. Typical.

Our ridiculously awesome tour guide DJ.

This is style.

CLEANEST ROOM EVER. Those are all air filters.

Big (REALLY BIG) vacuum chamber! Or, because NASA’s fancy, the SES – Space Environment Simulator.

There’s nothing cooler than a group photo with a tank of -320degree liquid nitrogen behind you.

And, as if 2 days at STSci and a day at Goddard wasn’t awesome enough, why not a few hours in the Nation’s Capital?! I took a WHIRLWIND tour of the Smithsonian… aka I ran around like a mad woman to try to see everything.

But, I did take a break for the spaceflight academy trivia game. I was player 11- flight ready!

There were lots of cool things at the Smithsonian, and I hope that one day I get to go back and really look at everything. Here are some of my favorites!

Wandering around outside for a few minutes… things were under construction and it did not look quite as pretty as it did when I’ve seen it on tv!

I was accepted to another Summer Research Experience this year, but I had to decline because I already had plans to attend Space Camp, Caltech, and I have a summer job. I was devastated, because the opportunity was at NASA Glenn in Cleveland to work with spacecraft engineers, but I’m beyond thrilled for the teachers that were chosen for that experience and all the others that are happening this summer. You can check out who they are and what they’ll be doing here: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/nes2/home/2013-recognition-awardees.html. I really am eternally thankful for all the amazing things I learned and did as part of this summer research experience, and I hope that all of you reading this see how fantastic NASA education programs truly are.

If the program continues, and I really hope it does, please sign up to be a NASA explorer schools teacher… it will be one of the greatest resources you’ll have for your classroom, and your students will thank you for it.

Here are my tweets from the time I was there (chronologically starting from the bottom)… so glad I could help some teachers get on twitter!

danielle miller ‏@d_l_miller20 Jul

It's been fun, Baltimore :) Headed home from #2012NES. Thanks for everything @NASAExplorerSch !

Sunday, June 9, 2013

NASA explorer schools summer research experience

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