Alyssa Goodman edited WWT in Education.md  almost 10 years ago

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The WWT Ambassadors Program trains expert professional astronomers, physicsists, and engineers to use WWT to teach STEM in a wide variety of educational envirnoments. Today, some of the Ambassadors are retirees as Strom envisioned, but most are active researchers at all levels ranging from advanced undergraduates to tenured faculty. Pat Udomprasert, a Caltech Astronomy PhD-turned-full-time educator, leads the WWTA effort. Ambassadors help create new Tours and attend science fairs and conventions, and many also participate in rigorous in-classroom research in K12 environments where Udomprasert and her team are researching how tools like WWT are best integrated into teaching and learning ecosystems as they evolve. Not surprisingly, kids and adults alike love using WWT (literally calling it "Cooler than Call of Duty," and the formal research clearly shows that people also _learn more_ from it than they do from more "2D" less interactive materials.  To date WWT Ambassador activities, carried out around the US, and in China, Poland, India, Germany, and the UK, have been funded by Microsoft Research, the National Science Foundation, and Harvard University. Now, the team is hoping to build upon its success with planned near-term collaborations with publishers and other broad-reach organizations and foundations. And, in 2013, some of Goodman's students in a Harvard graduate class even used WWT to create modular learning elements that will soon be included in the "edX" online learning platform for adults.  Kids in schools learn how to operate the WorldWide Telescope astonishingly quickly, so it is the ongoing role of Ambassadors to bring deep STEM (Physics, Math, Chemistry, Engineering) knowledge to bear on the kids questions, by answering questions in-person in classrooms where teachers are using WWTA curricula, and online by making meaningful Tours and answering internet-based inquiries.