You could also give away a nice scope or 2 at the end of the year to people that have attended many star parties and actually have shown an interest. They should earn the chance in some manner.
I would agree with those who favor training along with any telescope
giveaway, as well as a more user-friendly and capable telescope than what the club has been giving out.
Ten hours of instruction could be accomplished over the course of two star parties. What if SLAS set up a summer program with a fixed number of openings, people would sign-up and be required to attend two training sessions at star parties, and after completion would be given their telescope? Similar to what we do now with observatory use permission. We could also give a one-year membership along with the scope, for people to continue to receive mentorship, along with either basic planetarium software, or some type of printed media such as a simple star atlas or observing guide?
We would need volunteers as teachers, so I'll throw my hat in the ring right now if the program can run from May through September, for at least 4 sessions.
I'm not condemning the existing give-away program, and applaud those behind it. But I feel that by attaching a bit of required training with it, the long-term retention rate might actually be higher, even though fewer total telescopes would be given out.
My only other question is what strings are attached to the ZAP grants? Can required training be tagged-onto an outreach giveaway program? _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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