Day Twenty Four

Day 24 - Meeting with Dr Duane Hamacher

Today I met with Dr Duane Hamacher who is one of a handful of expert academics on Aboriginal Astronomy in Australia. Duane was able to provide me with a wonderful selection of resources that I can use as a starting point in my own Science lessons. Many of the resources that Duane has are from the area around Narrabri and Coonabarabran, traditional knowledge of Kamilaroi. While this is not local to my students I see it as a good starting point to promote discussion and hopefully set them on a path to discover local knowledge and stories.

http://aboriginalastronomy.blogspot.com.au/

 He also informed me that students studying his Aboriginal Astronomy unit this semester would be required to develop educational resources as their major assessment work. I asked Duane if he thought his students would be willing to showcase their work once they completed it, perhaps holding a workshop to share these resources with Science teachers. He has noted the dates of CONASTA 63 and said that he would look into this as a possibility.

A researcher has also created an add on for Stellarium that shows students the constellations known to Boorong people. "To see and use the Boorong Night Sky on your computer you need to download Stellarium for Windows version 0.10.6.1 or later from the Stellarium website: http://www.stellarium.org and then download and install the Boorong sky culture from this web address: http://www.terrastro.com/boorong. Look for the story of the image below." Activity 32 - Indigenous Astronomy

I talk to Dr Duane Hamacher about the implementation of the Australian Curriculum and the need for resources in this area, particularly for Year 6 teachers. He said this will provide himself and his students with drive to develop quality resources to assist teachers. I intend to tell Duane about Teacher Earth Sciences Education Programme (TESEP) with ASTA and the workshop I helped to develop called "Our Place In Space" and perhaps the opportunity to disseminate resources through this program. I also told Duane about "Primary Connections" and perhaps the opportunity to assist in development of teaching resources for these high quality publications.