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1. Total Eclipse En Frontera

   https://doi.org/10.3847/25c2cfeb.dcdd4f81  

   Miller-Ray, Jennifer; Brown, Angela; Ritzi, Christopher; Morales, Catarino; Williamson, Savanah; Qvarnstrom, Jeanne; Perez-Gallego, Jorge (December 2024, Bulletin American Astronomical Society)

   The Total Eclipse en la Frontera program provided informal and formal science education outreach using Sul Ross State University’s La Frontera Research Initiative (LFRI) mobile program, which serves communities located along the southwest Texas-Mexico border. With assistance from existing community partnerships, the Jay M. Pasachoff Solar Eclipse Mini-Grants Program, and the National Science Foundation Noyce program, our program reached over 20,000 people within a 6-month period. LFRI provided educational experiences to Uvalde CISD (4,041 students), Eagle Pass ISD (14,028 students), San Felipe Del Rio CISD (9,874 students), Southwest Texas Junior College (2,300 students), Sul Ross State University (2,071 students), and surrounding private schools, public libraries, and the general public. Established partnerships included the above institutions, as well as Presidio ISD, Marfa ISD, Alpine ISD, the Science Mill Museum, McDonald’s Observatory, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and the National Solar Observatory. Leveraging a mobile STEM Lab, LFRI provided eclipse-themed makerspace programing along with eclipse-focused educator training to include cultural total eclipse lectures with national experts to the communities along the southwest Texas-Mexico border. Specifically, border communities of Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Uvalde, and the Big Bend Region experienced STEM education outreach throughout the summer of 2023 leading up to the Total Eclipse in April 2024. Program outcomes provide a glimpse on the use of mobile makerspace program might increase STEM identity, self-efficacy, and engagement of isolated communities through a 2-year mentoring program connecting faculty, graduate students, preservice teachers, K12 educators, and community college students. 

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2. Engaging and educating eclipse observers in the Heliophysics Big Year

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2025.1701565  

   Reiff, Patricia H; Caspi, Amir; Sumners, Carolyn T; Gardner, Charles H; Kovac, Sarah A (January 2026, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences)

   The “Heliophysics Big Year” was an extended “year” when major solar events engaged the public. NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded several projects to educate the public on the science of the heliosphere and safe observing practices. In response to this initiative, we worked with other teams to create and disseminate accurate yet engaging information. We expanded our eclipse website (https://space.rice.edu/eclipse/) with activities, citizen science projects, resources, training videos, suggested equipment, and links to other compendia. We directed the Citizen CATE 2024 project, and trained state coordinators and their teams to use the specialized equipment and procedures. We trained teachers at local, regional, national, and international workshops, providing eclipse viewing cards, lenses for making “solar cup projectors,” a pattern for a safe viewing screen, and additional materials. With other teams, we gave presentations to the media at SciLine in San Antonio and hosted public events to demonstrate safe eclipse viewing techniques. The most lasting and impactful product was our planetarium show “Totality,” which was distributed free of license fees. More than 180,000 views of the show and its animations have been documented. We improved our space weather forecasting site (https://mms.rice.edu) and used our email lists (14,000+) to send out real-time warnings about the major solar storm of 10–11 May 2024. In total, we provided nearly two million people with heliophysics information. In summary, the federal/private/business partnerships meant that the events of this “year” were a fun, safe, learning experience for tens of millions of Americans. 

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3. 2025 AAG Education Summit - Roundtable Discussion

   Dony, CC (April 2024, American Association of Geographers)

   AG is organizing a series of roundtable discussions to prepare the outline for an “AAG Education Summit” at the 2025 Annual Meeting in Detroit (MI) that will offer networking, mentoring, and professional development for educators covering geography in K-12 and/or higher education. WHY THIS ROUNDTABLE? Part of AAG’s JEDI Strategic Plan is to hold roundtable discussions to foster collaboration between AAG, K-12 teachers, community college educators, and post-secondary geographers. Based on recommendations from the Encoding Geography Initiative and the National Center for Research in Geography Education, building “bridges” between K-12 and higher education should be a key strategy moving forward. Depending on who you ask, however, you will hear a different idea on what that "bridge" could look like, and to what level AAG should or shouldn't be involved. The goal of these roundtable discussions is to bring all these "bridge" ideas together. WHO DO WE WANT AT THE TABLE? We are open to anyone who would like to contribute to these conversations, but among those who we would like to see represented during at least one of our Roundtable Discussions are (in no particular order): Geography educators in K-12 and community colleges, the AAG Community College Affinity Group, the AAG Geography Education Specialty Group, representatives from the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE), representatives from the National Center for Research in Geography Education (NCRGE), representatives from the AAG Healthy Department Committee, representatives from the AAG JEDI Committee and its TLC GRAM Working Groups, representatives from former or active Geography State Alliances, representatives from Esri's education team, representatives from OSGEO, AP teachers or graders, Code.org teachers and teacher trainers, etc. 

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4. Exploring tools and strategies used during regular expression composition tasks

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC.2019.00039  

   Bai, Gina R.; Clee, Brian; Shrestha, Nischal; Chapman, Carl; Wright, Cimone; Stolee, Kathryn T. (January 2019, Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Program Comprehension)

   Regular expressions are frequently found in programming projects. Studies have found that developers can accurately determine whether a string matches a regular expression. However, we still do not know the challenges associated with composing regular expressions. We conduct an exploratory case study to reveal the tools and strategies developers use during regular expression composition. In this study, 29 students are tasked with composing regular expressions that pass unit tests illustrating the intended behavior. The tasks are in Java and the Eclipse IDE was set up with JUnit tests. Participants had one hour to work and could use any Eclipse tools, web search, or web-based tools they desired. Screen- capture software recorded all interactions with browsers and the IDE. We analyzed the videos quantitatively by transcribing logs and extracting personas. Our results show that participants were 30% successful (28 of 94 attempts) at achieving a 100% pass rate on the unit tests. When participants used tools frequently, as in the case of the novice tester and the knowledgeable tester personas, or when they guess at a solution prior to searching, they are more likely to pass all the unit tests. We also found that compile errors often arise when participants searched for a result and copy/pasted the regular expression from another language into their Java files. These results point to future research into making regular expression composition easier for programmers, such as integrating visualization into the IDE to reduce context switching or providing language migration support when reusing regular expressions written in another language to reduce compile errors. 

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5. Integrating Computing Throughout K-12 While Bridging the Digital Divide

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46898  

   Borowczak, Mike; Borowczak, Andrea (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   There is an ongoing need to integrate computing-related education within existing K-12 curriculum to maintain global competitiveness and security. Our research addresses the challenge of equitable access to concepts from across the computing spectrum - from computing systems to computer science and computational thinking. The research focuses on overcoming the digital divide by enabling K-12 educators to become conduits for computing education, thereby equipping students with essential computational skills and knowledge. Through two National Science Foundation awards, the team used a mixed-methods approach to develop and assess several traditional and non-traditional teacher engagements. These engagements included a week-long professional development program for K-8 educators and librarians, aimed at designing computing lessons for integration into non-CS disciplines, and a six-week research experience for educators, focused on infusing CS and research concepts into classroom environments. Each of these two engagements was repeated for three consecutive years for a total of six engagements. The assessment of these methods involved qualitative analyses of educator feedback, lesson plan evaluations, and quantitative measures of student engagement and learning outcomes. Our collected artifacts includes over 300 teacher-created and led, innovative lessons spanning a broad spectrum of subjects and educational levels. These lessons have directly engaged several thousand students, demonstrating a marked improvement in computational thinking skills across diverse student populations. Moreover, the engagements have resulted in a significant shift towards viewing computational thinking as an integral element of K-12 education, rather than a standalone discipline. This work highlights the process through which educators can become empowered to integrate computing principles across various subjects and also showcases the tangible benefits of such integration. By facilitating the authentic, teacher-led development of computing lessons and their integration into existing curricula, our research underscores the critical role of educators in bridging the digital divide and fostering a comprehensive educational experience that includes topics from across the computing spectrum. 

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