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Welcome!

Education and Public Outreach (EPO):

Interacting with Data in the Browser

Thursday, Aug 13, noon-1pm PDT

Chairs: Amanda Bauer, Lauren Corlies

Session Webpage: (link)

Rubin2020_PCW Slack Channel:

#day4-thu-slot3b-epo

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Friendly Reminders

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Friendly Reminders

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Agenda and Introductions

Chairs and Presenters:

Amanda Bauer

Lauren Corlies

Scribe:

George Gomez

Chat Monitors:

Kristen Metzger

Ardis Herrold

Support Team:

Blake Mason

Jose Pinto

Agenda

Welcome and EPO Team intro. (5 min)

Getting to know attendees. (0:05-0:10)

Overview of EPO Program and interactive widgets (0:10-0:20)

Demo + hands-on + discussion (0:20-0:50)

Questions and discussion (0:50-0:60)

Live notes document

Speaker: Amanda Bauer

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Goals for this session

  1. Share a quick overview of the full EPO program
  2. Present the current version of EPO interactive tools and the specific framework that they are supporting
  3. Get feedback on what you think about these tools
  4. Generate use cases for how you might use these tools to communicate science to the general public

Please ask questions by raising your hand in Zoom to speak or by typing a question into the Slack channel!

You can also give us feedback through this Google form whenever is convenient! https://forms.gle/CrsLpH95dtPxnHpc7

Speaker: Amanda Bauer

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Education and Public Outreach - Mission

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Rubin Observatory PCW 2020 - Intro to Rubin

Rubin Observatory EPO’s mission is to offer accessible and engaging online experiences that provide non-specialists access to, and context for, LSST data so anyone can explore the Universe and be part of the discovery process.

Speaker: Lauren Corlies

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Our Novel Approach to EPO

Speaker: Lauren Corlies

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Education and Public Outreach Overview

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Rubin Observatory PCW 2020 - Intro to Rubin

Formal Education Program

Website & Skyviewer

Citizen Science Infrastructure

Multimedia Gallery

Suite of classroom investigations that enable students to work with real LSST data

Operations site to communicate science discoveries and all-sky viewer to explore the survey

Videos, graphics, & planetarium videos for use in talks, science centers, etc.

Pipelines and project templates to enable the easy creation of citizen science projects

Speaker: Lauren Corlies

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Education and Public Outreach Overview

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Web & logo Design

Interactive Widget Development

Education user testing

Speaker: Lauren Corlies

Vera C. Rubin Observatory | Project & Community Workshop | August 10 - 14, 2020

#rubin2020

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HIRING! Astronomy Content Strategist

Main responsibilities include:

  • Creating fun and informative web content that resonates with our audiences
  • Building our online community by posting content, answering questions, and engaging with social media users
  • Developing social media campaigns in alignment with EPO and Project key messages and communications goals
  • Setting measurable goals for the EPO social media effort and using metrics to better serve our audiences

Demonstrated interest in communicating Astronomy to the public is the only requirement.

We are HIRING!

Look for the official job posting coming this September! Reach out to Lauren Corlies via Slack or email if you or someone you know may be interested in this position!

Speaker: Lauren Corlies

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Over the past year, the Rubin EPO team has built many browser-based tools for directly interacting with real astronomical data, designed around actions familiar to a typical web user. Currently, these tools have been applied specifically to formal classroom “investigations” for students in advanced middle school through college intro levels.

Speaker: Amanda Bauer

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Formal Education Program Components

  • Interactive web applications “investigations”
  • Teacher guide
  • Assessment materials
  • Standards support
  • Hook/ Phenomenon
  • Website resources
  • Professional Development for educators

Vera C. Rubin Observatory | Project & Community Workshop | August 10 - 14, 2020

#rubin2020

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User Testing is happening now, online

We transitioned to a virtual strategy for the User Testing phase of our educational investigations. Largely successful so far.

Map of Rubin EPO user testing participants, as of August 2020

"The interactive learning through the investigations was a much better way to learn astronomy than to try to just read about it."

"My mind is just blown away with everything that I have been exposed to and learned. I have so many ideas for my students after attending this workshop and I can't wait for the telescope to be up and running!"

"I learned a lot about astronomy and feel much more confidence in teaching the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) astronomy concepts assigned to my course."

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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User Testing is happening now

We are now testing classroom investigations. If you are interested in participating, contact us at education@lsst.org

We are especially interested in broadening testing with diverse student populations.

Map of Rubin EPO user testing participants, as of August 2020

"The interactive learning through the investigations was a much better way to learn astronomy than to try to just read about it."

"My mind is just blown away with everything that I have been exposed to and learned. I have so many ideas for my students after attending this workshop and I can't wait for the telescope to be up and running!"

"I learned a lot about astronomy and feel much more confidence in teaching the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) astronomy concepts assigned to my course."

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020

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Interactive Widgets

These widgets allow people to investigate relationships between images and data points, create their own color images, and visualize 3D structures in the universe, among other things.

Our intention is to embed these widgets throughout our website and social media channels in order to transform a passive experience, like reading an article, to an interactive one where people can explore LSST data themselves.

Our system does the work, not the user’s

Speaker: Amanda Bauer

Vera C. Rubin Observatory | Project & Community Workshop | August 10 - 14, 2020

#rubin2020

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Demo and play time!

At the link below, we invite you to explore samples of these interactive widgets.

We’d like to get your feedback on the tools (Are they fun? Are they engaging?)

We’d also like your help to generate use cases for how you might use these tools to communicate science to the general public.

You can provide us feedback during the session on the slack channel (#day4-thu-slot3b-epo) and through this survey form:

https://forms.gle/CrsLpH95dtPxnHpc7

Speaker: Amanda Bauer

Rubin Observatory | PCW 2020 | Education and Public Outreach

#rubin2020