Hey, everyone. I promised a couple of weeks ago a follow-up to a recent “Learning Space” episode about new developments in Astronomy Education. I was at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Indianapolis in the beginning of the month where I saw some interesting talks and posters about how to teach and share astronomy. I wanted to follow-up with some helpful links to what goodies I came across for you to peruse at your leisure.

First of all, here’s the episode if you missed it and wanted to check it out:

I spent a bit of time in that episode talking about a session called “Astronomy Education: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?” If you’d like some references for that, check out page 26 of the meeting program (pdf). But I’d really like to point out some of the cool posters that I saw for which I only was able to tell you bits and pieces of during the episode (and some I forgot but wanted to add now):

• Rick Feinberg (also a previous Learning Space guest) had an update on the AAS Astronomy Ambassadors Program. This is a workshop at the winter AAS meeting where early career astronomers can learn about effective ways of doing outreach and build a community of outreach-focused scientists. I’m not a complete newbie to outreach, but I know I have a lot to learn, so I’m hoping to be accepted into the program for this coming meeting.
• I had a bit of tunes to keep me company at my poster since I was near James Webb (no, not that one) and his poster about musical collaborations between an astronomer and a musical producer. I picked up a demo CD, and the songs make a nice little addition to my music collection, especially for when I want music for a science-y event. 
• There was some very interesting work coming out of the University of Kentucky on how to improve spatial-science reasoning in middle school children, especially for girls and students of color. I spoke with Jennifer Wilhelm, and you can find her webpage here.
• I unfortunately did not get to talk to the professor who had the poster on teaching a freshman seminar course on science and science fiction. So I may have to follow up on that…
• The open-source astronomy textbook I mentioned is called the FreeSTAR project, and you can find more information about that by clicking “FreeSTAR” under links for the pdf at this site.
• TeachAstronomy.com was also there with a poster on their suite of resources, so I grabbed a card.

Let me know if there’s something I mentioned in the episode but forgot here that you really, really want to know more about.

There were lots of good discussions throughout the conference, and we even had a star party! I had a great time chasing down astronomical objects (and the ISS) with astronomers from the meeting and from the Indiana Astronomical Society.

Pre-star party setup

Be sure to check out the full archive of Learning Space if you haven’t already. Thanks!