Ms. Stefaniak worked with her honors chemistry students to produce activities at the
fourth annual Science Night Live at Allentown Elementary School. They also helped run the Science Night Live for the third graders at Allentown Elementary. There were about 500 kids with their families for a 2 hour science-a-thon.
Ms. Stefaniak's astronomy students worked as volunteers at the PTA's Science Night on Friday, March 3. All third grade students at Upper Freehold Regional Elementary School, their parents and younger siblings are invited. The night runs as a series of tables and booths that the students and their parents can circulate among to learn and play with science related activities. The student demonstrated astronomy activities and showed a short powerpoint loop of NASA's great observatories with the "greatest hits" images from Spitzer, Chandra and Hubble. They also distributed solar system coloring books and copies of the NASA/NOAO press release of the brown dwarf article.
All told, there were about 120 kids and their family members.
February 2006
After the AAS meeting, Ms. Stefaniak along with Howard Chun and Beth Thomas,
worked with Steve Howell and submitted a follow-on
observation proposal (submitted end of January). From their initial Brown
Dwarf study, a possible dust disk was discovered surrounding both the
brown dwarf and white dwarf pair. The group requested a spectra of one of their
objects to resolve the true nature of what they were observing. The proposal
was accepted (2/15) and the team is now waiting to be placed on the Spitzer
observing schedule. They also worked on an ApJ Letter with Steve Howell
describing the dust disk discovery during the months of January and
February. The ApJ Letter was submitted, reviewed, resubmitted, and, as
of 3/20/06, the letter is still in its second review.
January 2006
Ms. Stefaniak attended the AAS meeting in Washington D.C. where she helped present her
group's poster on the Brown Dwarf project.
May 2005:
The school year is ending in two and a half weeks. Ms. Stefaniak's astronomy class and honors chemistry class are finishing their RBSE research papers. The chemistry students are all working on AGN spectra. The Astronomy students are working on a variety of topics in AGN, solar and stellar research. These papers will be submitted next winter for the 2006 RBSE journal.
Ms. Stefaniak is currently collecting materials, fine tuning the agenda and preparing worksheets and other documentation that will be used for two astronomy related workshops that she will present this summer as part of the Teachers' Professional Programs offered by Brookdale Community College's Office of Community Development.
July 2005:
Ms. Stefaniak had the astronomy workshops.
She also attended a week long workplace readiness
workshop the last week in June into July and got ideas for all her
classes.
October 2005:
Ms. Stefaniak finished a long day of four back to back workshops at the NJ
Science Teacher's Convention during the first week of October. She
started with multiple wavelength astronomy and finished with infrared.
Both workshops were well attended and the video with Dr. Thaller explaining
IR was a huge hit. Everyone wanted a copy. Ms. Stefaniak
took digital images of some of the activities for possible use as
illustrations for the group's EPO poster. There was also an astronomy
teacher attending the IR workshop who was extremely interested in knowing
how to become one of the next generation Spitzer teachers.
Workshops
Ms. Stefaniak is scheduled for a summer course on the Invisible Universe starting July 19. She is also planning several workshops in October
for her state science convention including on October 6:
Teaching Multiwave Astronomy 8:30-9:30
DASLed by the Sun 10-11
Infrared Astronomy 2-3:30
Future Plans
Ms. Stefaniak has an infrared workshop planned for summer and autumn 2005.
She also has another non-IR-specific astronomy workshop summer 2005.
The programs will run on July 18 and 19 at Allentown High School from 9 am - 2 pm.
The first program is Solar Research in the Science Classroom and the second is The Invisible Universe.
Shortened versions of both programs will also be presented October 5 and 6 at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, NJ.
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
