Early Learning and Astronomy, IAU 260 Symposium

Today was the first day of the IAU’s 260 Symposium on the Role of Astronomy in Society and Culture. I registered around 8.30am then headed back to the hotel to work on my talk. I would have had it finished last week but with the reporting on the opening ceremony and site seeing over the weekend I ran out of time and spent most of this morning cramming more links to websites and reports in. I gave my talk at around 5pm, which was half an hour later than sheduled as all of the talks from each of the sessions were running over.

There were a lot of people in the session, which is always a good sign and people took notes, so this is always a good thing!

Here a few piccies from the session.

Me in a skirt, not sure about the pink and blue combination though!

Here is moi looking rather perplexed as I tried to work on a french keyboard, it pays to plug the projector into the laptop when trying to start a presentation!!! ( DOH!)

My talk was on Early Learning in Astronomy and I covered the subjects of the activities that I have been involved in coordinating for the UK projects for Universe Awareness. Carolina Odman and George Miley were in the room also and it was a good opportunity to demonstrate to the participants attending the session what goes on in other countries around the world as part of one of the main Global Cornerstone Projects. By the way, if anyone is reading this and is interested in getting involved in the programme in the UK, drop me a comment, the programme aims to support the teaching of astronomy and space education on a national scale in the UK and as national coordinator we need a group of people to act as regional coordinators to help deliver activities across UK schools and informal science events.

I also gave a break down of what is happening in the coming months for IYA 2009 as part of the education related Global Cornerstone Projects, especially the Galileo Teacher Training Programme, Dark Skies Awareness, Developing Astronomy Globally and, of course the Cosmic Diary which you are reading now.

People starting to arrive to the presentation

The aim of the talk was also to demonstrate how people can get involved with the education network for IYA 2009 which will be based as a global group of educators, scientists, communicators , enthusiasts and students themselves. The Astrokit website aims to be a web based repository of resources and act as a platform for people to communicate through and this was also presented in

the talk.

A full house

Can you hear me at the back?

whoa that screen is bright

After I gave the talk I went to the next room immediately to hear Magda Stavinschi’s talk on Big Questions of Astronomy. It was really thought provoking stuff and covered the major cosmological issues. For example, did you know that in 100 billion years, if astronomers are still around, we will not be able to detect any of the microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang?

After Magda’s talk it was time for a well earned break. I thought I was seeing things when I saw my good friend Susan stood in the doorway. No, I wasn’t seeing things, she was actually here! Susan had flown in from Kenya and looked completely exhausted, the first thing she said was, “I’m cold”. I’m not surprised! I’m looking forward to catching up with her but for now signing out and looking forward to tomorrows sessions where I might attempt live cosmic blogging from the symposium tomorrow, Sotira signing off, over and out!