St. Mary's School, Medford, Oregon
9, 10, 11, 12
Science Teacher
Ms. Bensel is a NITARP educator as part of the 2013 class.
Ms. Bensel's students participated in lots of activities associated with DART. They were interviewed here.
Ms. Bensel reports that as a result of her student Cody's work with NITARP, Cody is now working with Chris Crawford who developed a meteor counting system for NASA that was used on a plane in 1999. Cody and Chris are making an app for counting meteors that will take users' GPS position and uses that to do spatial analysis on the data.
Ms. Bensel did a presentation about NITARP at the Oregon Science Teacher Conference in Portland.
Ms. Bensel's student from her NITARP year got a very nice writeup in their local paper.
Ms. Bensel also writes that they worked on building a Radio Jove telescope this year and got it to work.
Ms. Bensel got some nice local coverage from her school regarding her team's AAS presentation.
Holly Bensel, John Gibbs, and Laura Orr had their proposal accepted for a NITARP presentation at the 2013 Portland (OR) Area Conference on Science Education, scheduled for Oct 24-26, 2013.
Mr. Gibbs made a presentation about his NITARP experience at the Oregon Science Teachers Association (OSTA) meeting. And he got to meet two of the newly accepted teachers (Laura Orr, Holly Bensel) for NITARP 2013!
As a result of my student Cody's work with NITARP, Cody is now working with Chris Crawford who developed a meteor counting system for NASA that was used on a plane in 1999. Cody and Chris are making an app for counting meteors that will take users' GPS position and uses that to do spatial analysis on the data.
I definitely felt more at ease at this conference than last years. [..] I was visiting with all kinds of people, retired Yale professor, grad student from Sicily, etc and not feeling out of place. It was great. I could approach others at the conference with more confidence which changes how I view professional astronomers. I think I could ask for advice on future projects more easily and confidently. I found it a very supportive environment.
[at the AAS,] I went to a talk on how university clubs were struggling with the same issues that I have at the high school level. Students are busy so even though they are interested there are time constraints and many times club meetings are the first things to drop when other time demands get in the way. I came out of it feeling like I am not alone or that I am not doing something wrong when students tell me they can’t make the meetings. Sometimes I thought I should be doing something different to keep students motivated. Apparently, clubs all over the US are struggling with this and it was nice to hear their stories and ideas.
I just think experiencing a conference of this size and magnitude is terrific.
I enjoyed meeting the students from the other schools. They were polite, articulate, and intelligent. I thought the teachers and parents had done a great job raising these kids and preparing them for the meeting. I hope my students are half as good.
One thing I learned from this meeting is I love my project. It is going to be very interesting and way cool!! I can’t wait to tell my astronomy club about it.
