On Mar 19, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Jordan Raddick wrote:

> For those of you that I met at the AAS/AAPT meeting in Seattle,
> it's been a little more than 2 months, so I wanted to check in with
> you and see how you've been able to use SkyServer. For everyone else,
> I'd love to hear from you too!
> I'll be doing more SkyServer workshops in the future, and I'm
> collecting some information on how people are responding to the
> workshop a couple months later, beyond the standard end-of-workshop
> evaluation forms. Your feedback now will help us improve the
> experiences of other teachers then. Please hit reply to this E-mail
> and fill out the short survey below (just five questions!) Put your
> answers right below the questions. Question 5 asks what questions you
> still have - I'll post answers to this list.
> If you hit reply, your responses will be posted to the entire group
> - your ideas might spark some ideas in other people. If you'd prefer
> to respond just to me and keep your answers anonymous, copy and paste
> your answers and send them to raddick@... .
> Thank you, and I hope you keep finding the SDSS useful!

Hi Jordon and group.

My course's pacing is rather slower than usual this semester, but
we're almost to the point where we'll begin using the SDSS
activities. I usually start with hunting asteroids and then progress
into spectral classification and then into color and the HR diagram.
These activities make the textbook come alive (pardon the cliche).

> 1. How would you describe yourself and your school?

I'm at a community college in western North Carolina. I've been
teaching for nearly 15 years.

> 2. What courses do you teach?

Currently, I'm in charge of calculus-based physics (two semester
sequence), general astronomy (two semester sequence), and descriptive
astronomy (one semester). I'm currently writing a textbook for
semester one of the two semester sequence. It's built entirely around
critical thinking. I would love to revamp the second semester of the
sequence so that it's built around the SkyServer activities.

> 3. How often do you use Sloan Digital Sky Survey data in your
> teaching?

Every spring in my second semester astronomy course.

> 4. What tools and projects of SkyServer do you use most often? Why?

Asteroid hunting (I wrote the version of the activity I use...it's on
SkyServer), Color (practice with measuring real fluxes and
magnitudes), Spectral Types, HR Diagrams. These all reinforce
textbook concepts. The asteroid activity also gives students a gentle
introduction to image processing software. I use the freely available
ImageJ from NIH.

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com