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On Thursday and Friday, August 2-3, 2001 the AAVSO and the Highlands County School District held an HOA workshop for teachers in central Florida. Two elementary, two high-school, and 14 middle-school teachers attended. The workshop was run by AAVSO Director Janet Mattei, AAVSO Technical Assistant Aaron Price, and Brian Rogan, a 22-year teaching veteran and Chair of the Science Department at the New Jewish School in Waltham, MA. In addition, Chris Stephan, an AAVSO member and science teacher at Lake Placid High School, organized the workshop from the local side and provided valuable experience and good humor!

Click on any picture to view a larger version.

Day One

Janet walks the class through their HOA materials.

AAVSO Technical Assistant Aaron Price discusses interpolation, the technique used to make a variable star estimate.

During lunch, Erica Redmond, sophomore at Lake Placid Highschool, discusses her science fair project on archeoastronomy.

Chris Stephan and Erica Redmond answer questions about her science fair project.

Participants create a string model of the Solar system to illustrate the distances used in astronomy.

Day Two

An excellent breakfast, prepared by the mother of a student courtesy of the Parent Teacher Association.

Early morning arrivals discuss the planispheres they made the night before.

Brian Rogan discusses the H-R diagram.

Participants use the software package HOAFUN to make variable star estimates.

Brian Rogan discusses light curves created by the HOA software package VSTAR.

Janet introduces the class to HOAFUN Software.

The class discusses an HOA poster page about Henrietta Swan Leavitt.

Door prize giveaway!