ATNF outreach

Astronomy from the ground up!

Eighteen teachers from NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland participated in a three-day astronomy workshop, Astronomy from the ground up!, held at the Parkes Observatory from 12 – 14 May 2004. They ranged in experience from those new to teaching to others with more than 30-years experience.

The workshop took place primarily in the 3D theatre at the Visitors Centre and the conference room at quarters, with other activities taking place on the lawn in front of the quarters and along the Avenue. It concluded with a tour of the site and a hayride on the dish.

Figure 1: The astronomy workshop participants. Photo:Rob Hollow

Workshop sessions included talks on a range of subjects, practical activities, night-time viewing through optical telescopes and time for general discussion and inspection of resources. On the Thursday night a live-link to the Charles Sturt University (CSU) remote optical telescope at Bathurst allowed participants to control the telescope and take and download CCD images in real time over the Internet. Speakers were primarily ATNF staff; Jessica Chapman gave two sessions, one on the Milky Way and galaxies, the other on the life and death of stars, George Hobbs engaged the teachers with a talk on pulsars and gravity, John Sarkissian discussed how spacecraft have helped us explore the Solar System whilst Roopesh Ojha talked about "Astronomy on Ice", interweaving his year at the South pole with a talk on multi-wavelength astronomy. David McKinnon, Professor of Online Teaching and Learning from CSU talked about the remote telescope. He also ran some practical activities and helped with the night-time viewing sessions. Robert Hollow organised the workshop and presented sessions on Australian Astronomy and Cosmology. Rob also arranged activities and demonstrated a set of teacher resources, compiled on CDs, that were developed for the workshop.

Food and catering was provided by both the Dish Café and observatory staff and was both plentiful and tasty. Parkes staff cooked a barbecue on the Thursday night to coincide with the viewing session under wonderfully dark skies. The Parkes Observatory worked very well as a venue and we thank the observatory staff for their help in ensuring that the workshop ran smoothly.

Figure 2: The workshop participants on the Dish. Photo:Rob Hollow

Overall, judging by the comments on the evaluation forms, the workshop was very successful. The teachers went away stimulated, challenged, well fed and well resourced. Common responses in their feedback was firstly the great value in being able to meet, talk to and socialise with the astronomers and other staff who all gave freely of their time and secondly, the obvious passion and enthusiasm everyone had for their work and research. Two comments may best sum up the teachers' feelings: "Excellent – it would rate 11 on a scale of 1 to 10" and "The best I've been to in 30-years of teaching". The opportunity for teachers to spend a few days away from a school environment networking with peers and meeting professional scientists and engineers is one that is worth continuing in future years.

Rob Hollow
(Robert.Hollow@csiro.au)

Outreach and education website

In mid-May the ATNF released a new website for outreach and education. This can be seen on the web at http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au .

One of the major aims of this website is to provide educational resources in astronomy, for students and teachers. At present we are developing the web content to support the astrophysics syllabus for senior high-school students in Victoria and New South Wales. We also plan to provide astronomy resources for other states in Australia, and for school students of all ages. The site also provides information about the ATNF and its history, special feature articles, visitors' information and links to public astronomical facilities in Australia.

Over the next few months we will be continuing to develop new content and facilities for this site. We welcome any suggestions and feedback on this outreach resource.

Jessica Chapman, on behalf of the website development team
(Jessica.Chapman@csiro.au)