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Summer Visit - 2012 - ColdSpotz

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The Cold Spotz team came to visit in June 2012. The core team educators plus 8 students attended.


Quotes

  • I had anticipated the stress and frustration of trying to push the students and data further than we had before. While I felt our students were well prepared, there was a lot of information which we needed to digest and incorporate into our workflow, and young students are not always that quick on their feet when it comes to complicated procedures or conceptual reasoning. However, I felt the students did great and the challenge was appropriate.
  • The best thing about this trip was watching the confidence level rise in each participant. [..] By the end of the week, my two students felt so much more confident in their Excel abilities that they were helping others write formulas to make calculations easier. It was also exhilarating to witness [the other] teachers gain faith in their understanding of the project, as well.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing that happened was the several occasions where I discovered that I actually understood what was going on. The little "ah ha!" moments were really exciting and unexpected for me, as the material was so complicated and so unlike anything else I had learned in school.
  • The best thing about the trip was the entire experience. Working with a professional astronomer and learning completely new things was amazing.
  • I did not expect to use the internet as much as we did.

Summer Visit - 2012 - ColdSpotz