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Round 1 - M81 Program News
Click on any teacher's name to see activities associated with NITARP.
- Theresa Roelofsen (Bassick High School, Bridgeport, CT)
- Babs Sepulveda (Lincoln High School, Stockton, CA)
- Tim Spuck (Oil City Area High School, Oil City, PA)
- Linda Stefaniak (Allentown High School, Allentown, NJ)
- Cynthia Weehler (Luther Burbank High School, San Antonio, TX)
Highlights of team activities
January 2007
The team presented two posters at the January 2007 AAS meeting entitled
"Multiwavelength Observations of Tidally Induced Star Formation in the M81 Group"
(ADS Abstract)
Poster
"Spitzer Space Telescope Research Program for Teachers and Students: Using Spitzer data in your classroom with (relatively) simple software"
(ADS Abstract)
Poster
July 2006
Both MIPS and IRAC data have been observed and archived.
The M81 group visited the SSC from July 10-12 to reduce and analyze
data from their round 1 proposal. The team processed data to
determine which was usable for identifying new stars in the tidal
tails.
July 2005
Linda Stefaniak presented 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.
November 2005
On November 8th, Theresa Roelofsen ran an Astronomy workshop for 30
middle school teachers that all teach in the Bridgeport District. It
was 3 hours long and she had them do activities that they can use in
their science classes, as well as demonstrated other activities.
October 2005
Linda 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.
Cynthia Weehler
presented 2 workshops at San Antonio Regional Science/Math Saturday on Oct. 15, to teachers from around Texas; "Incredible Infrared: Feeling and Hearing Light" and one on the Spitzer Teacher Research Project.
Ms. Weehler presented two workshops at the Conference for the Advancement of Science Teachers (CAST) in Houston, TX, on Oct. 27-29. These workshops were co-presented with Babs Sepulveda and each was 1.5 hours long. She also gave our website to a NASA clearing-house group at the conference who had heard of us by word of mouth only but had placed us in their brochure.
Ms. Weehler used the Texas Public Radio Station (KSTX) recording studio and equipment for student Jessica Herrera to interview Dr. Tom Soifer from San Antonio about the Spitzer Telescope and Teacher Research Program. Jessica used this information to write a story for The Harvest News, the Burbank High School student paper. She was also interviewed by Rolando Martinez for The Communicator, the San Antonio Independent Schoo l District newsletter. The Spitzer Program has now been written up three times in school district newsletters.
Student Jessica Herrera and Ms. Weehler were both interviewed by Ernie Villarreal at KSTX for a story that he will produce in January, to be aired before the AA S conference in Washington D.C. where we will present our poster papers. Jessica has been working on making tri-color images using Maxim DL and writing a composite of the surveys that the teachers and students in the group answered after the trip to the SSC in Pasadena.
September 2005
Cynthia Weehler has been working hard to get an Astronomy class,
Science Research and Design course, or anything that will allow her to
include students in the Spitzer research.
May 2005
Linda Stefaniak writes:
The school year is ending in two and a half weeks. My astronomy class
and honors chemistry class are finishing their RBSE research papers.
The chemistry students are all working on AGN spectra. Astronomy
students on a variety of topics in AGN, solar and stellar research.
These papers will be submitted next winter for the 2006 RBSE journal.
I am currently collecting materials, fine tuning the agenda and
preparing worksheets and other documentation that will be used for two
astronomy related workshops that I will present this summer as part of
the Teachers' Professional Programs offered by Brookdale Community
College's Office of Community Development. 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.
April 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
March 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
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