HR: 16:22h
AN: ED34A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Hands-On Universe Teacher Courses and the NASA Kepler Mission Outreach
AU: * Gould, A D
EM: agould@berkeley.edu
AF: University of California, Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA 94709 United States
AB: The NASA Kepler mission has elements that serve a variety of audiences: formal education (elementary, secondary, and colleges), informal education (planetarium shows and museum exhibits), and public outreach (broadcast TV, radio, website, CD-ROM, and toolkit for amateur astronomers). The Kepler Cam program will provide minority colleges with CCD cameras and training systems for ground-based observations of exoplanet transits. Kepler Cam is closely tied with the Hands-On Universe (HOU) project that aims to have high school students actively involved in research projects such as asteroid discovery, supernova searches, cataclysmic variable observations, and studies of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Last fall (2003), HOU completed an NSF funded study in the relative effectiveness of online and face-to-face professional development courses. The evaluator for the project was TIMSS (Third International Math and Science Study). Findings, based on student performance, indicate that online teacher courses are as effective as face-to-face courses in teacher professional development. Details are in this paper.
UR: http://kepler.nasa.gov
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0830 Teacher training
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting