February - April 2009
Since the AAS, Ms. Zielinski has asked her two students to follow up with a summary of the findings associated with the Z Cha data. She anticipates a final report from these students by the end of May. They will be graduating this year, so Ms. Zielinski will begin work with a new group of students in the fall. Her plan is to work this summer on further developing some of the classroom activities worked on for the project. She plans on spending some time this summer going through some of the new materials gained from the AAS conference and seeing whether she can adapt any for her own classroom use. Ms. Zielinski has hand-picked some of her better and more interested students to learn about the Spitzer project and to do research and teach about it. She also wants to look through the Spitzer website for more teacher projects that she can utilize. Ms. Zielinski is also interested in learning more about the possibility of working with some of the Spitzer "warm mission" scientists on future Spitzer projects.
Ms. Zielinski reports that the scope of the Spitzer project has taught her students to be better researchers, writers, and speakers. The positive impact was definitely worth the hard work. Her two Spitzer students are now concentrating on preparing for college. Ms. Zielinski has asked the students to present to her a final report on their project before they graduate and she is planning on submitting it to the RBSE Journal for publication. The students have been featured and recognized for their accomplishments with the Spitzer program. They were interviewed by the school newspaper and stories appeared on the school website.
October 2008 - January 2009
This quarter with Spitzer has been an amazing one. At the end of September and beginning of October, two students (Samantha Hopkins and Michael Dzakovich) and myself (Lynne Zielinski) traveled to the Spitzer Space Center in Pasadena to reduce our data for the variable star Z Cha taken by the Spitzer spacecraft. In preparation for this visit, students worked with both the Image J and DS 9 software programs. They also created a Z Cha research summary and put together a notebook containing background research materials associated with Z Cha, paying particular attention to finding and documenting any light curve data they could find. Of the six students that I had working at school on this project, two were chosen to come to the SSC. While at the SSC, we were joined by three other teachers, Beth Thomas, Jennifer Teller, and Virginia Jones, and their six students, along with our scientist mentors, Don Hoard and Steve Howell.
Together, we worked on the data reduction of Z Cha collected by Spitzer.
Then in January 2009, the same student team traveled to the American Astronomical Society symposium in Long Beach to present our research data in a poster session. The students had a very interesting experience, attending oral presentations and speaking with astronomers. The students learned much about the professional world and how scientists network and share information, and really appreciated the opportunity to participate in this experience.
Between these two events and back at school, the student and I worked on further examination and analysis of the Z Cha data, shared the experience with the other students, and developed an eclipsing binary star demonstration/activity. This activity was designed to present a 3-dimensional model and to demonstrate how a binary star system works. In addition, the students created a 3-dimensional physics model of a binary star system. The activities and how-to-make the model guide were written up and added to the activities presented on the poster for the AAS meeting and they were placed on the Spitzer Education web page.
In addition to the on-going learning curve associated with understanding variable stars, photometry, and how to use Image J and DS 9 software. While at the SSC, students learned how to do in-depth research using professional data bases, reduce raw data using IRAC software, create graphs from this style of data, write an abstract for the AAS, and summarize the results of all these efforts. At school, students learned how to design, test, practice, and present an activity and model that can be used by other students and teachers. Students also learned how to design, prepare, and create a professional poster. At the AAS conference, students learned how to use their poster as a tool for one-on-one presentations, become less "shy" about talking to professional astronomers and scientists, and much about astronomy topics in general.
To date, I have used the Spitzer Teacher Research program to engage students in real-world hands-on research and to provide students with the opportunity to learn research techniques, and how to use the typical tools astronomers use, like image processing programs. Also, this program allowed me the opportunity to support my efforts in promoting research-based studies at the high school, and to provide students with opportunities that they would never have without the Spitzer Teacher Research program, such as visiting the SSC, working alongside astronomers, and presenting at the international AAS conference.
The skills that the students have acquired because of this program are unique and will help them throughout their lives. This is a solid statement because the skills acquired include those of public speaking, creating presentations, developing activities, providing learning opportunities for others, tutoring, proactive, leadership, and technology skills. The students have taken a lot of ownership in this project and are seeking ways to help spread the word by writing a research report and submitting it to the RBSE on-line journal in February.
The students have done a lot between September and January, as stated in the sections above. Currently, they are writing a research report about Z Cha and the results of the Spitzer data. They are also going to further adapt the interacting binary star system activity based on the feedback received at the AAS.
I plan on developing a way to incorporate the real-data from Z Cha and WZ Seg, the use of photometry, and the activities we created this year into next year's Astronomy class curriculum. Secondly, I would like to get more students involved in photometry of variable stars and look at other Spitzer materials developed by teachers. I would also like to utilize Yerkes observatory to take ground-based images of cataclysmic variables that students can create light curves from.
The news of the student's experience at Spitzer and the AAS has caused many other students to become interested in astronomy and want to take the Astronomy class. Students in my space science club have been asking if they can get involved in similar research projects and to do research that can be submitted science fair-type programs.
The local science department teacher blog has published a brief posting and some pictures from the SSC visit. The students have been interviewed by the district publicity director and some publicity will come out of that in the next month.
July-September 2008
Ms. Zielinski has six students working on learning about the Z Cha variable star that is associated with her Spitzer team's project. The students have been doing several things. They have learned about photometry, cataclysmic variable stars, and image processing. They have completed a summary about Z Cha, compiled many articles and Internet resources about the variable, and are working on how to do photometry. They are learning how to use Image J and DS 9 software to do photometry. DS 9 seems to be a much easier program to use and one student is becoming the team expert using this software. Ms. Zielinski and her students are learning a lot about variable stars and photometry and have also learned about other Internet on-line resources like the AAVSO. Over the summer, more research was done on Z Cha and Ms. Zielinski along with two members of her student team traveled to the Spitzer Science Center in September 2008 to reduce and analyze their data. They hope to present at the upcoming AAS.
Ms. Zielinski's students are very excited about the Spitzer program and have spent many hours working on "getting up to speed", sharing with Ms. Zielinski and each other. Ms. Zielinski has found that her students are forcing her to go further than she thought possible. Ms. Zielinski has been very impressed with the student's proactiveness and the leadership role that they have taken. She know that they are taking pride in their work on this project. As the word has spread, other students have become interested in the project and Ms. Zielinski has been seeking to find ways to bring them into it.
Ms. Zielinski plans on having students do some more real-data related work on variable star Z Cha and photometry. Secondly, she would like to get more students involved in photometry of variable stars and look at other Spitzer data sets like WZ Sge. She would also like to utilize Yerkes observatory to take ground-based images of cataclysmic variables that students can create light curves for. In addition she would like some of the students to use this experience to apply for science fair or other science related competitions and do some presentations or poster sessions.
During the summer, Ms. Zielinski gave a presentation to a group of astronomy teachers this summer at Yerkes observatory.
January-June 2008
This is my first report. To date, I have six students working on learning about the
Z Cha variable star that is associated with my Spitzer team's project. The students
have been doing several things. They are learning how to use Image J software to do
photometry. Much time has been spent on this task since neither I, nor they have
ever worked in photometry, and setting up Image J has been problematic. After our
first meeting, last January at the AAS, the students began researching cataclysmic
variable stars and WZ Sge. Than we moved on to researching the star we were
assigned, but after a few months the star was changed to Z Cha.
I have hand picked some of my better and more interested students to learn about the
Spitzer project and to do the research and to teach me about it.
My students are very excited about this and have spent many hours working on
"getting up to speed", sharing with each other and me. I have found that they are
forcing me to go further than I thought possible. I've been very impressed with the
student's proactiveness and the leadership role that they have taken. I know that
they are taking pride in their work on this project.
The students are currently learning about photometry, cataclysmic variable stars,
and image processing. They have just completed a summary about Z Cha and are
working on how to do photometry.
I plan on having students do some more real-data related work on variable star Z Cha
and photometry. Than I hope that we can travel to the Spitzer Office to do analysis
on the Spitzer data of Z Cha.
Secondly, I would like to get more students involved in photometry of variable stars
and look at other Spitzer data sets like WZ Sge. I would also like to utilize
Yerkes observatory to take ground-based images of cataclysmic variables that
students can create light curves for.
Thirdly, I'd like some of the students to use this experience to apply for science
fair or other science related competitions and do some presentations or poster
sessions.
Jeff Adkins
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John Blackwell
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Jacqueline Barge
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Christopher Border
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Kareen Borders
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Robert Bonadurer
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Merrill Butler
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Lauren Chapple
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Joseph Childers
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Howard Chun
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Wendy Curtis
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Richard DeCoster
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Stacy DeVeau
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Harlan Devore
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Cris DeWolf
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Velvet Dowdy
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Thomas Doyle
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Dean Drumheller
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Debbie Edwards
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Mike Ford
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Debbie French
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John Gibbs
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Peter Guastella
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Rosa Hemphill
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Ardis Herrold
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Vivian Hoette
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Chelen Johnson
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Virginia Jones
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Adam Keeton
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Susan Kelly
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Marcella Linahan
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Thomas Loughran
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Carolyn Mallory
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Anthony Maranto
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Christoper Martin
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Kevin McCarron
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Matthew McCutcheon
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David McDonald
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Shefali Mehta
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Cindy Melton
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Kate Meredith
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Lauren Novatne
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Kathryn O'Connor
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Caroline Odden
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Jeffrey Paradis
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Vincent Pereira
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Helen Petach
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Peggy Piper
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Peter Pitman
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Elizabeth Ramseyer
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Steve Rapp
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Theresa Roelofsen Moody
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Denise Rothrock
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Diane Sartore
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John Schaefers
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Sally Seebode
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Babs Sepulveda
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Timothy Spuck
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Darryl Stanford
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Linda Stefaniak
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Dwight Taylor
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Jennifer Tetler
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Beth Thomas
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Cynthia Weehler
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Lynne Zielinski
