I live in Knoxville, TN and the 7th grade classroom I connected with is in Seattle, WA. Because it’s all conducted via Skype, the scientists and classrooms could be anywhere. This organization matches scientists with teachers who would like to have a scientist talk to their classrooms about their research, maybe related to something they’ve studied in class. Helens ash my gramma collected off her car the morning after the eruption, a piece of Columbia River Basalt I collected in undergrad, a gypsum rose from Morocco (my parents bought it in a shop in Oregon), a large quartz crystal my gramma collected in the Mojave desert, a piece of rose quartz I collected in the Sierra Nevada, and a piece of amethyst my roommate brought back from Uruguay.

I didn’t take any pictures during the session, but here are the rocks I used to answer their question “what are your favorite rocks that you’ve collected?” Clockwise from top left: a conglomerate a friend sent me from California, a jar of Mount St. Instead of going to a classroom or museum and talking to students in person, I got to share my research with students in a classroom all the way across the country via Skype! I had signed up with an organization called Skype a Scientist earlier this past fall.

I recently got to participate in a different kind of outreach activity.

Skype a scientist live