E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 1 James Lochner HEASARC E/PO Lead

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 2 Our E/PO Objectives  Promote our Science, Missions, and Technology to the general public.  Develop curriculum support materials with teachers for the K-14 education community.  Integrate various E/PO initiatives within HEASARC and the LHEA into a coherent program.  Distribute materials and information via high-leverage opportunities.  Monitor our efforts via formal evaluations and teacher feedback.  Integrate our efforts with SEU Education Forum and OSS E/PO Support Network.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 3 E/PO Team  E/PO Scientist Lead, 2+ support staff  Portion of time of science writer, graphic artist, and meeting support staff.  Summer teacher interns and network of teachers representing a wide range of classroom levels and technology capabilities.  Dozen volunteer scientists and programmers.  Answer “Ask a High-Energy Astronomer” questions.  Provide input and review to Imagine web site and materials.  Leverage off other Lab and GSFC expertise and resources.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 4 Education Web sites  Imagine the Universe!  More than half million hits per month  Distribute > 20,000 CDs/year.  CD rated for “broad distribution” by Space Science Education Product Review.  Planning tri-annual external review of the site.  StarChild (Whitlock)  L. Whitlock continues to maintain and develop site as we host it.  1.2 Million hits per month (among top 3 sites at GSFC).  Astronomy Picture of the Day (Bonnell and Nemiroff (MTU))  6 million hits per month (top site at GSFC).  HEA Picture of the Week (Corcoran)

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 5 Materials Under Development Poster and Information Booklet on the cosmic origin of the elements & their connection to us. Lab Scientists, E/PO staff, and GSFC Education office participating in development.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 6 Development of Cosmic Connection Materials  Material tested at “Elements 2002” summer workshop for educators.  Participants developed classroom activities for booklet. Activities tested by external educators.  Assistance in facilitation of workshop provided by Ilan Chabay.  Follow-up meeting reviewed test results and finalized the activities.  Poster evaluated by expert in graphic science.  Further evaluation of poster by students in coming weeks.  1-hr workshop for NSTA under development (with AESP in GSFC Education Office).  Expect completion in 2003.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 7 Hera Education Interface  Give teachers and students easy access to data and software tools via the Hera framework to engage students in the process of doing science.  Summer teacher intern guided the content and scope of data and analysis.  We’ve also studied the Chandra education software and activities for ds9.  We have developed a guided project in which students apply epoch folding to RXTE ASM data.  An extension of an Imagine lesson.  We’ve also identified additional data sets for students to further explore.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 8 Hera Education Interface (cont.)  Prototype interface has been constructed.  Utilizes selected tools with salient input parameters.  Includes web page walk- through of data analysis process.  Future projects will include imaging and spectra.  Funded by GSFC Director’s Discretionary Funding.

E/PO Activities in the HEASARC 9 Outreach to Undergrads and Graduate Students  Astronomy 191 (Corcoran)  Astrophysics from a high-energy perspective  George Washington Univ, upper undergrad-lower graduate level course. Offered once a year since  Team taught by 6 Lab scientists  Web site includes syllabus and lectures  X-ray Astronomy School (Harrus and Arnaud)  For graduate students and recent post-docs to understand the foundations of X-ray Astronomy.  Previous schools had attendances of 40 & 55 students  3rd Annual School, May 12-16, 2003 at Wallops.