What Would Galileo Teach Today? from Galileo’s Classroom Now Available

October 16th, 2009

Passing on some news about an educational project I contributed to:

Science educators Stephanie Slater (University of Wyoming), Janelle Bailey (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), and Michael Gibbs (Capitol College) have compiled and edited a coherent set of IYA2009 educational materials that provide both content knowledge for classroom teachers and classroom-ready materials suitable for use, with or without a telescope, in a variety of formal and informal settings. It’s called Galileo’s Classroom: A Teacher Workshop in Celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and it is the international and national nodes of IYA2009.   Galileo’s Classroom is now available at no charge for educators worldwide, online from the CAPER Team website at the University of Wyoming.

The activities  in Galileo’s Classroom have been selected from among thousands of available astronomy-related activities, based upon their utility in modeling Galileo’s findings and on our current understanding of exemplary classroom practices. Each activity has been rewritten into the natural language of classroom teachers and has been field tested in schools.

Galileo’s Classroom is a collaborative effort of individuals at more than a dozen institutions, representing several nations from three continents. Efforts are currently underway to translate Galileo’s Classroom for non-English speakers.   Please direct your inquiries to Stephanie Slater at sslater3@uwyo.edu.

My particular contribution is a short essay about updating Galileo for the 21st century, What Would Galileo Teach Today?, in terms of how astronomers continue to use improvements in telescope technology to make fundamental discoveries about our universe.

Comments welcome.

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