There are electronic subscriptions and services that I find particularly useful. (Under construction!)
Index:
Newsletters (participatory)
Discussion groups
Press releases & news services
Paper subscriptions
Professional societies
AAS Working Group on Astronomy Education
- The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has a Working Group on Astronomy Education (WGAE). Members send information to Steve Shawl, who compiles the notes and sends them out periodically in an electronic newsletter. Quality depends on the contributions, but such things as "is it better to build a college observatory on campus or at a nearby dark site?" get discussed. Old issues can be found in the ftp archive. To subscribe, send e-mail to shawl@kuphsx.phsx.ukans.edu. The Wave is an on-line Newsletter on the
educational outreach programs of the Center for EUV Astrophysics.
To subscribe, send an e-mail message to:
majordomo@cea.berkeley.edu
that contains the line:
subscribe ceaedu
To send e-mail just to their education outreach group, address it
to outreach@cea.berkeley.edu
Usenet
(news and discussion) groups are both useful and time consuming. You can join them or drop out as you please, but your institution needs to provide access. It takes a while to develop the skill to sort through the less useful messages. I hope to print a list of useful groups here, sometime in the future. DOME-L is a moderated list for discussions
among planetarians (planetarian = planetarium staff member).
Since planetariums ("planetaria", if you prefer) are
astronomy education organizations, this is a pretty natural place
to discuss astronomy education. As with AAS/WGAE, the quality
depends on the contributions. Sometimes it's planetarium-specific
shop talk, and sometimes it's of more general interest. The
volume is fairly low -- the moderator (Alan Gould) tries to
concatenate messages and send them about once a day.
To subscribe, send an e-mail message to:
listserv@gibbs.oit.unc.edu
containing the line:
subscribe Dome-L@gibbs.oit.unc.edu your name
but fill in your actual name. Also please keep your name to two
words -- use underscores to do this if you wish: Mr._Alan Gould,
Alan_D. Gould, AlanD.Gould, Mr.Alan Gould
NASA Press Releases
- It's nice to know what NASA's saying as soon as the Press does, especially if you have teachers or others that call you with questions. Send a message to: NSF Press releases and other information -
You can always get these from STIS (next item), but I find it
useful to get them automatically Send an e-mail message to:
listmanager@nsf.gov
containing the following line:
subscribe nsfnews
It'll read your e-mail address from the header, and you'll get a
confirmation e-mail message.
NSF summary of publications - STIS is dry
reading, but a useful weekly listing of new and updated
publications and announcements, including grant opportunities.
Send an e-mail message to:
listserv@nsf.gov
containing the following line:
subscribe STSSUM-L (your name)
except replace (your name) with your actual name. It'll read your
e-mail address from the header.
They're also available from the STIS gopher server.
The Physics Education Newsletter (PEN)
is edited by Mr. Tracy Schwab of the American Institute of
Physics's (AIP's) Education
Division. It lists new studies and documents, grant
opportunities, and what various organizations are doing. To subscribe,
send an email message to:
listserv@aip.org
Leave the "Subject" line blank. In the body of the
message, enter the following command:
add pen
(Note: PEN is also circulated within the AAS/EWG newsletter,
although there's usually a delay between the two.)
Earth and Sky - get the scripts for Deborah
Byrd and Joel Block's daily radio spot over the internet. Send an
e-mail message to:
majordomo@lists.utexas.edu
containing the line
subscribe EARTHANDSKY yourname@host.domain.name
but replace that last item with your actual e-mail address.
The
Scout Report is produced by InterNIC under an NSF grant,
and gives a weekly listing of new, newly announced, and newly
discovered online resources. They're not all educational, but
they come up with occasional gems, and it's easy to scan. The
information is also available through WWW. To join
the electronic mailing list, send email to:
majordomo@dstest.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
subscribe scout-report (for text version), or
subscribe scout-report-html (for hypertext
version)
As usual with automated subscriptions, send the message from the
machine you want the subscription sent to, and save the message
that tells you how to unsubscribe.
Project RISE
has been established as a resource for scientists doing education. The publish a (paper) newsletter, and do workshops for scientists who want to be active in education. Contact RISE@NAS.edu.WonderScience is published monthly by the American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Physics. Each month during the school year, they send a short magazine with a set of related activities for children and adults to do together. It costs $9.50 a year for a single subscription (call 1-800-333-9511 for more information or back issues). About one issue a year is obviously astronomy or space science, but many of the activities can be easily used for astronomy. Plus, they're fun, even without a child partner.
Learning, an education newsletter, is also available online.
Naturally, you should be sure you're getting any publications or announcements from your professional societies. You might also want to tap into publications from related organizations.
Go (back) to the Astronomer's Education Notebook or Elizabeth Roettger's Homepage.
Created 14 March 1995, last revised 15 June 1997
by Elizabeth E. Roettger, roettger@ix.netcom.com
URL: http://www.nthelp.com/eer/AENsubscriptions.html