The NRAO’s “RARE CATS” program is designed to help teachers to use real research as an instructional activity in the classroom.  The institute not only helps teachers to learn how to use research in the classroom; it also models the process with the teachers in the role of student.

    The teachers in the program were provided with the opportunity to learn about research instructional methods in a classroom setting.  Specific instructional techniques were modeled, discussed and analyzed.  We were provided with general astronomy instruction, and tours of the research areas, engineering laboratories and support facilities at the radio observatory.  Several observatory astronomers and staff members gave presentations to us about their research, and assisted us in our own.

    Teachers were also immersed in a model program.  My research group used the 40-foot radio telescope pictured above to observe hydrogen gas clouds in our Milky Way galaxy, locating concentrations and measuring the velocity of these concentrations with respect to us.   By experiencing the process as a student, I became more sensitive to what works and doesn’t work with students.  It was also fun to get to use a real radio telescope.

    I spent 2 weeks at “radio astronomy boot camp” during August of 2001.  I returned to the observatory for two weekends during the school year (Nov. & April) for collaboration with other teachers on classroom research projects.  I  also spent a week during July, 2002, in a “Hands-On Universe” program learning how to involve my high school students in analyzing astronomical images using image processing software.   [Hubble Space Telescope images and others are public access on the web, some telescope observations can be requested over the web, some even operated  remotely over the internet.]

    In my classroom, we have already started a solar physics research project, based on the RARE CATS model.  The following pictures are from our early research.

  Viewing the sun directly with an Ha filter.

       Finding the angle of elevation of the sun.                   Observing a solar image with a
                                                                                         "SunSpotter" TM telescope.
 
 

David Carpenter, Physics Teacher
Rutherford B. Hayes High School
Delaware, Ohio
October, 2001
 

RARE CATS
Joint sponsorship by:
   National Science Foundation
   National Radio Astronomy Observatory
   West Virginia University
   West Virginia Department of Education

go to RARE CATS based research projects at Hayes H. S.

go to RARE CATS Photo Gallery page 1
go to RARE CATS Photo Gallery page 2

Equatorial sundials, bridge projects in background, Physics 2 class of 2002.