My last day
at AAS was not as hectic as the past three, for sure. I made sure to sit down
with the Kepler Exoplanet Data that my team will be using to be sure I knew
what I was doing while I could still ask questions of my mentor teacher and the
scientists. The day started with a session on the solar system, and although it
was in a huge room, there probably weren’t any more than 30-40 people there. I
guess our Solar System doesn’t seem so cool anymore now that there are
exoplanets just about everywhere you look.
Part of the “homework” assignment for my team was to look for light
curves, and there were some in the Solar System talks this morning, in a
presentation about Kuiper Belt objects. I also heard from scientists who study
comets, and then I ran to a different room to hear from a NASA scientist about
their Education and Public outreach portfolio. I haven’t been able to look into
everything yet, but I did want to mention NASA Wavelength ( http://nasawavelength.org/ ) a place to
go for education resources. As an educator who loves NASA resources I
frequently find it overwhelming to find exactly what I’m looking for. This site
is very well organized, even though it doesn’t have nearly as many resources as
some other places. I also found out that Eyes on EXOPLANETS is available! Check
out http://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/exoplanets/. My students and I love Eyes on the
Solar System and now there’s a brand new program that is similar to it, except
it allows you to see artist renditions of cataloged exoplanets. (And it’s in 3D
too!)
I roamed
around the exhibit hall for a bit to find some more posters with light curves,
then attended my first Town Hall meeting about the James Webb Space
Telescope. I expected a town hall to be
a bit more intense than this one was, but I thought it was very positive.
Though I wasn’t at the NASA town hall yesterday, but the way the presenters
mentioned it made it seem to me the discussion in that meeting did get a bit
heated. There were three presenters and the first was Eric Smith who spoke
about the telescope and timeline for the mission. He showed us a chart with the
number of milestones for each year. In 2011, there were 21 milestones, and all
21 were met. in 2012, there were 37 milestones, 34 were met and 3 were pushed
to this year. In 2013 there are 41 planned milestones, 10 (!!) of which are
already complete! He also spoke a little bit about all the cryo tests that will
start soon. Randy Kimble who spoke more in depth about all the ridiculous tests
JWST will be going through all the way up to launch in 2018. What I thought was
cool was that NASA modified an old Apollo cryo test chamber at Johnson to fit
JWST. Lastly, Dr. Mike Brown (the @plutokiller himself!) talked about how we know
very little about the outer solar system and James Webb can help us figure out
much more when it comes to unanswered questions. The Kuiper Belt is a funky
place for sure.
For my last
session, I attended Advocating for Astronomy, a session about how to promote
science in our government the right way. The four person panel was led by one
of the media people from AAS and had 3 others with experience advocating and
promoting science in Washington DC. One of the things they all agreed on was
that scientists are not exactly the best at communicating their own work and
their needs to the people who make the decisions. We were shown a chart of
constituent calls, letters and visits (recorded by one of the panelists) and
the numbers were just sad. When it came to calls about space, there were about
1 per year, science in general, only 1 per month. Meanwhile, issues like Social
Security and Medicare got about 5 per day. If you’re interested in getting
really involved, check out http://setcvd.org/ and go visit some congress people!
Also, check out http://fellowships.aaas.org/ for fellowship opportunities. If you aren’t looking for something quite
that intense, just know how to be a better, (nicely) outspoken constituent.
Understand that congressional staffers are young but educated (but probably not
in science), handling a lot of issues at one time, working very hard, and want
to help you if it’s possible. You should know before
calling/emailing/writing/visiting what you’re asking for and what law/policy
you’re talking about. All of the speakers
made it a point to say there’s a lot of noise coming from a lot of different
people, but if you have a clear message and purpose, you’re definitely going to
be heard.
One thing
that happened during this experience – which also happened at my NASA explorer
schools summer research experience – is that I helped 2 (maybe more) teachers
get twitter accounts! I really believe that my teaching has improved since I
started tweeting, and I also believe that my love for NASA was rekindled
because of it too. Once you really understand how twitter works and you follow
the right people and chats, the conversations you have can absolutely change
how you think and learn for the better. Though I’m not totally a twitter expert
(I always go over 140 characters and frequently forget to cite my sources) I do
think it’s a great tool for education. Sometimes for exit slips, I have the
students “tweet” their answers, because I think if you can explain something
well in just 140 characters, you really understand the concept. If you’re an
educator and thinking about twitter, check out this livebinder, by one of the
educators I follow on twitter! http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/34291
Now I’m packing up, getting a few hours of
sleep and headed back to Florida bright and early! I’ve got to get some grading
done and get ready for midterms next week. Thanks for following along with my
AAS adventure!
in the lobby of my hotel
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