National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

• NASA Education has launched a new program for K–12 students and educators called NASA Exploring Space Challenges. Find out more about upcoming missions at http://esc.nasa.gov.

• NASA’s Engineering Design Challenges Program allows middle and high school students to work on challenges similar to those faced by NASA engineers in designing space vehicles, habitats, and technology. Students, with teacher supervision, must design, build, test, redesign, and rebuild models that meet specified criteria, then produce a poster that describes the process and results of their work. The design challenges focus on such areas as thermal protection systems, electrodynamic propulsion systems, and water filtration. Teachers can download an Educator Resource Guide at http://eto.nasa.gov. Materials for each challenge include a teaching guide, lesson plans, and transparencies.

• NASA’s Solar System Exploration website at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ offers access to an array of educational resources—from a current calendar of mission-related events to a “people’s choice” gallery of popular celestial images—for everyone interested in space. Want to investigate the possibilities of extraterrestrial life or the volcanoes of Venus? Teachers will find what they need with the Fast Lesson Finder, which makes it easy to locate grade-appropriate lessons on a particular topic. One of the newest programs, Reading, Writing, and Rings, combines scientific thinking with the intelligent use of language in lessons based on the Cassini-Huygens mission; like the site’s other materials, it can be downloaded free. When students visit the Solar System Exploration website, they can learn more about the persons who make NASA explorations happen; read about NASA-related contests, scholarships, and internships; and get directions for hands-on projects like making a pizza that looks like Jupiter’s moon Io.

• This NASA educator guide presents the basic science of aeronautics by emphasizing hands-on involvement, prediction, data collections and interpretation, teamwork, and problem solving. The guide has activities for middle-school and upper-elementary grades, complete with clear directions for teachers (including photos and diagrams), and substantive worksheets. Teachers will find all the background knowledge they need to teach basic aeronautic principles, and each activity uses simple, inexpensive materials. Read the guide at http://snipurl.com/ExploreExtreme.

• Aligned with national life science standards, NASA’s Flies in Space website (http://quest.nasa.gov/projects/flies) informs students in grades 5–8 about NASA's life sciences/space biology research and the immune system, focusing on the model specimen Drosophila melanogaster, or the common fruit fly. Students can take a pretest to see how much they already know about flies in space, ask fruit-fly experts questions, and hypothesize what they think will happen to the flies when they travel in space. Educators can access instructions for using the website in class, a worksheet with answer key, and an activity guide.

• Interactive Extraordinary Earth CD-ROMs can interest students in grades 4–9 in science and math by enhancing existing curricula. The CD-ROM covers a wide range of Earth science topics and has almost 1,000 interactive questions, more than 2,000 sound bites, and more than 160 activities. See http://pcsinspace.hst.nasa.gov. The software is freeware, and teachers and organizations may make as many copies as they desire. E-mail boxturtlesoftwar@aol.com, and request Extraordinary Earth.

• On the Visible Earth website, http://visibleearth.nasa.gov, NASA has compiled numerous images and animations of Earth from space. Educators can browse the images by state, country, or geographic region; by the satellite used to capture the image; and by such subcategories as astronaut photography, agriculture, and oceans. Nearly all of the images can be downloaded and used free with proper credit to NASA.

• NASA’s Star Count website asks one big question: Do people everywhere see the same number of stars in the night sky? As part of a NASA-sponsored mission to answer that question, students are invited to count the stars they can see after they construct a star-count viewing tube and learn estimating techniques. They then submit their data online and view data collected by their counterparts around the world. Students can try to figure out why results may differ with location. To learn more about Star Count, go to http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/starcount/home/index.html.

• Cartoon characters Kate and Carlos host a talk show that introduces elementary-age children to astronomy in a kid-friendly way. In each of the six episodes currently available, a different real-life scientist guest chats with the hosts, describing his or her job with NASA, related space science concepts, and answering some personal questions, too, such as “What’s your favorite cool fact about space?”
  The Space Place website also includes games, project ideas, and amazing-fact pages. Send your students to http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/live.

• NASA’s Robotics Alliance Project seeks to expand the pool of robotics experts that will be available to develop future systems needed by the agency. To that end, the Alliance supports a series of robotics competition programs for students, facilitates robotics curriculum enhancements at all educational levels, and has developed a national clearinghouse for robotics education and career resources. At the Alliance website at http://robotics.nasa.gov, users will find examples of robotics applications in space exploration, medicine, and mechanical automation, along with multimedia games, educational activities, and lesson plans. An archive of robotics-related webcasts offers such titles as “Women Working on Mars: What Do Engineers Do?” News articles about specific robot uses in industry and research are also included.

• How might a scientist test whether a given material would be appropriate for spacecraft construction? Elementary students can find out by doing a new activity from the Space Place, a website with space science and technology content written specifically for that age group. Through this hands-on experiment (which requires adult supervision), children can gain insight into the many variables involved in spacecraft technology and design while simultaneously learning about vacuums and air pressure. You’ll find the activity at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/nmp_action.shtml.

• The NASA Earth Science Enterprise has produced a movie called The Global Water Cycle, available for downloading from its Water and Energy Cycle web page at http://watercycle.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php. The global water cycle involves the transport and transformation of water within the Earth system, and it employs water in all three of its phases: solid, liquid, and gaseous. The associated energy and nutrient exchanges among the atmosphere, ocean, and land determine Earth's climate. The movie’s animation conceptualizes these elements and their effects on the environment.

• Five identical probes will help NASA scientists study what triggers geomagnetic substorms—the atmospheric events visible in the Northern Hemisphere as a sudden brightening of the Northern Lights. The Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission will give scientists a comprehensive view of substorm phenomena from Earth’s upper atmosphere to far into space, enabling them to pinpoint where and when each substorm begins. The satellites were launched in February for a two-year mission. For more information about THEMIS, visit www.nasa.gov/themis. A teachers guide and related lessons, all correlated with the National Science Education Standards, explore the physics concepts behind THEMIS, including magnetic fields and charged particles. Go to http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/themis/classroom.html.

• The NASA Hinode (Solar-B) mission investigates the interaction between the Sun’s magnetic field and the corona. This resource center at http://solarb.msfc.nasa.gov/for_educators/index.html introduces educators to solar flares, explaining why we should understand them. The center’s materials are designed by scientists and educators to ensure their accuracy and relevance to authentic classroom learning goals. They can be used as supplementary enrichment activities in math, science, technology, and reading.

• Project 3D-VIEW (Virtual Interactive Environmental Worlds), for grades 5–6, is produced by U.S. Satellite Laboratory, Inc. and funded by NASA. The project creates a virtual telepresence for students in each of the "spheres" of Earth science (biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere). Employing NASA Earth science mission data, three types of simple-to-use 3D learning technologies, and the internet, Project 3D-VIEW aims to help students become prepared for Earth system science topics and courses and science-based decision-making in high school and beyond. Register at http://www.3dview.org. After their training is completed, teachers receive curricular materials including student worksheets, a DVD with all technology tools, and 3D glasses.
  

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