Teaching From the Frontiers of Science

You all know that I write materials for a lot of different venues — fulldome theaters, exhibits, podcasts, vodcasts, magazines, books, etc.  One of the questions I am often asked is “Where do you get the ideas for what to write?” Aside from the obvious commissioned works, where a client wants me to write about a specific topic like space weather or climate change (for example), I take my ideas from the “frontiers” of science, where the work is being done and publicized in some way. It might be from a press release, or a talk, or a hallway conversation at a conference that spurs my attention.

But, what if you’re a teacher working fulltime in the classroom? Or a Girl Scout leader helping students work on projects in science, or an astronomy club leader who is doing an outreach day?  Do you have the same time and resources as I do to find out what’s hot in Big Science?  Possibly, although nobody can have enough to time to follow every story, not even me. So, formal and informal educators get singled out in education and public outreach pages of various institutions such as NASA, ESA, and the major observatories and research groups.

In the last couple of entries I’ve listed institutions and observatories, and each one of those has an education and public outreach section — which I encourage you to check out if you need materials for outreach.

I just found out about a new one being made available by a group I belong to — the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.  It’s called Discoveries in Planetary Science, and it contains Powerpoint® presentations and PDFs suitable for both formal and informal educators to use in their classrooms, club meetings, etc.  The downloads are created and vetted by planetary scientists, and contain background material for lectures, plus very useful links to other pages where you can learn more about such topics as the first images of exoplanets, the chaotic early solar system, Mars atmospheric science, the sulfur cycle on Mars, and volcanoes on Mercury. There are more subjects being submitted, so keep checking back.