Goodman A, Fay J, Muench A, Pepe A, Udomprasert P, Wong C, Egret D, Gabriel C.
WorldWide Telescope in Research and Education. In: ADASS XXI. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific ; 2012. pp. tba.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe WorldWide Telescope computer program, released to researchers
and the public as a free resource in 2008 by Microsoft Research, has changed the way
the ever-growing Universe of online astronomical data is viewed and understood. The
WWT program can be thought of as a scriptable, interactive, richly visual browser of
the multi-wavelength Sky as we see it from Earth, and of the Universe as we would
travel within it. In its web API format, WWT is being used as a service to display professional
research data. In its desktop format, WWT works in concert (thanks to SAMP
and other IVOA standards) with more traditional research applications such as ds9, Aladin
and TOPCAT. The WWT Ambassadors Program (founded in 2009) recruits and
trains astrophysically-literate volunteers (including retirees) who use WWT as a teaching
tool in online, classroom, and informal educational settings. Early quantitative
studies of WWTA indicate that student experiences with WWT enhance science learning
dramatically. Thanks to the wealth of data it can access, and the growing number
of services to which it connects, WWT is now a key linking technology in the Seamless
Astronomy environment we seek to oer researchers, teachers, and students alike.
WorldWide Telescope in Research and Education.pdf Udomprasert P, Goodman A, Wong C.
WWT Ambassadors: WorldWide Telescope for Interactive Learning, in
Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Vol 457. San Fransisco, CA: Connecting People to Science ; 2012 :149-154.
AbstractThe WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors Program (WWTA) is new outreach initiative run by researchers at Harvard University, WGBH, and Microsoft Research. WWT Ambassadors are astrophysically-literate volunteers who are trained to be experts in using WWT as teaching tool. Ambassadors and learners alike use WWT to create dynamic, interactive Tours of the Universe, which are shared in schools, public venues, and online. Ambassador-created Tours are being made freely available and will ultimately form a comprehensive learning resource for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
In this short talk, we will describe the results of a Pilot Study where volunteer Ambassadors helped sixth-graders use WWT during their six-week Astronomy unit. The results of the study compare learning outcomes for 80 students who participated in WWTA and 80 students who only used traditional learning materials. In the comparison, we find that, after the six-week unit: twice as many "WWT” as "non-WWT” students understand complex three dimensional orbital relationships; and tremendous gains are seen in student interest in science overall, astronomy in particular, and even in using "real” telescopes.
Plans for WWTA include expansion to five US sites within the coming year, and ultimately to an International Program. Online materials will ultimately be available through several sites (at WGBH, Harvard and Microsoft), and will be integrated with existing online curriculum programs such as WGBH’s Teachers’ Domain and Microsoft’s Partners in Learning. More inormation is presently available at www.cfa.harvard.edu/WWTAmbassadors/.
2012_udomprasert_goodman_wong-asp.pdf