{"id":22689,"date":"2016-06-24T20:32:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T01:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=22689"},"modified":"2016-06-24T20:32:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T01:32:59","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-college-of-education-prepares-local-teachers-for-2017-solar-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2016\/06\/24\/austin-peay-state-university-college-of-education-prepares-local-teachers-for-2017-solar-eclipse\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University College of Education prepares local teachers for 2017 solar eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – More than 4,000 years ago, Chung K\u2019ang, the fourth emperor of the Hea dynasty in China, reportedly executed two astronomers named Hi and Ho because they didn\u2019t predict a solar eclipse.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo (an eclipse) is a very important thing; it can be life-threatening,\u201d Dr. Rex Gandy, Austin Peay State University provost and vice president of academic affairs, joked recently. \u201cAnd it\u2019s pretty amazing. The sun is 90 million miles away, and it\u2019s huge, so what are the odds that there is this little rock a quarter million miles away that just blots out the sun almost perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tennessee<\/a>

Tennessee State Representative Joe Pitts tries out a pair of solar glasses during a recent educational summit at APSU.<\/p><\/div>\n

Next year, on August 21st, 2017, that \u201clittle rock\u201d in the sky will cause Clarksville to go dark for about two minutes during what NASA is calling \u201cThe Great American Eclipse.\u201d Clarksville is one of the few cities in North America located along the eclipse\u2019s path of totality, meaning the city is one of the best places in the world to witness the rare event.<\/p>\n

The APSU Department of Physics and Astronomy is preparing several activities for that day, but this summer, the University\u2019s Martha Dickerson Eriksson College of Education is making sure local students get to take full advantage of this upcoming eclipse. On June 21st, the college hosted an educational summit, \u201cPreparing for the Big Event,\u201d which provided elementary and middle school teachers from across Middle Tennessee with strategies on how to incorporate the eclipse into subjects such as science, mathematics, language arts, art and music.<\/p>\n

Several hundred teachers arrived at the campus\u2019 Dunn Center that morning, where they received special solar glasses for next year\u2019s event. Dr. Carlette Hardin, dean of the Martha Dickerson Eriksson College of Education, said they intend to distribute glasses to schools for students to use on the day of the eclipse.<\/p>\n

Mitzi Adams, a NASA astrophysicist, served as the event\u2019s keynote speaker, and she provided additional pointers on how to engage elementary and middle-school-aged students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese teachers are going to learn about the sun, about how to view the sun safely and hopefully they\u2019re going to encourage their students to experience this event that may not occur for them, in a place that\u2019s easy to get to, for the rest of their lives,\u201d Adams said before the summit. \u201cIt\u2019s an event that doesn\u2019t happen very often, it\u2019s an event that inspires awe, and hopefully it\u2019s an event that will cause students to study science and technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardin said the College will host another summit next summer, just a few months before the eclipse, for area high school teachers.<\/p>\n

For more information on the upcoming solar eclipse and APSU events associated with it, visit www.apsu.edu\/eclipse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – More than 4,000 years ago, Chung K\u2019ang, the fourth emperor of the Hea dynasty in China, reportedly executed two astronomers named Hi and Ho because they didn\u2019t predict a solar eclipse. \u201cSo (an eclipse) is a very important thing; it can be life-threatening,\u201d Dr. Rex Gandy, Austin Peay State University provost and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,24760,26537,438,20918,262,13094,825,357,12041,9598,413,28477,753,2406,11328,10947,25204,2952,26536,28476],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-5TX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22690,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689\/revisions\/22690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}