NASA's Explorer Schools [nasanasainfo.blogspot.com]
Usually when we think of NASA, we think of spacecrafts exploring new frontiers. And so they do, of course, but the nation's space agency has its hand in more earthly pursuits, as well--pursuits that may well have a direct influence on the children in your life.
In the NASA Explorer School (NAS) undertaking, created in 2003, the agency partners with under-serviced schools across the nation to bring mathematics, science and technology curriculum to students ranging from K-12. When a partnership agreement is reached, teachers and a school administrator team up to develop and implement a three-year action plan that addresses local challenges in the subjects mentioned earlier. Based on information generated through needs assessments, this customized plan is delivered through a combination of on-site school services and distance-learning networks.
Program elements include professional development workshops during the summer months in which teams of educators meet at the nine NASA Field Centers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The intensive, one-week training provides opportunities for the teachers to begin to integrate NASA content into the existing school curricula, and extends to creating and implementing action plans to address local challenges.
Throughout the school year, ongoing research-based professional development includes NASA aerospace education specialists, Space Grant consortia, educator resource centers, and NASA Education networks.
That's the somewhat boring explanation of what it's all about. The real-life examples are much more exciting.
Botball, Anyone?
Chances are you've never played botball--given that it's a game played only by robots. But, hey, robots have to have some fun too, right? For the past three years, students at Explorer Schools have been accepting the challenge to build and program robots to compete with opponents on a field the size of a ping-pong table. The challen ge for 2006 was "Search and Rescue." Robotics teams worked autonomously to locate a plush robot and his "tribble" friends. ( Star Trek fans understand tribbles. They're the round, furry animals that reproduce faster than spam in your Inbox.) The challenge was to complete various tasks and score points ahead of the opposing robots. (It's a bit like Survivor, without the bikinis.)
Search and Rescue (and the other botball challenges) gives middle and high school students a hands-on learning application in science, technology, engineering and math. The competing teams built their robots from an official kit containing such goodies as 1,800 LEGO building blocks, two Xport Botball Controllers (XBCs, attached to Nintendo® Game Boy Advance devices), and 20 censors, including color-recognition cameras. After using the pieces to build their robots, students programmed them using a version of the C computer language.
The annual botball challenges have generated so much ent husiasm that at least 13 regional tournaments are held across the United States. Hawaii is actively involved, with more than 20 participating schools. The 2007 national tournament will be held in Honolulu in July, and will be one of the events at the National Conference on Educational Robotics.
NASA's Web site quoted Jade Bowman, the NES team lead at Hawaii's Waimea Middle School, as saying, "The Botball program has been an avenue for our students to broaden their horizons in many areas." Bowman added that the botball program exposed the students to new careers, taught them to use a variety of technology, increased self confidence, developed complex thinking, and showed the importance of team playing.
Cassini Scientists for a Day
On January 23, 2006, a group of California third, fourth and fifth graders became "scientists for a day," and selected where to point the cameras on the Cassini spacecraft as it continued its tour of the space around Saturn . These students of Shirley Avenue Elementary School in Reseda, California (part of the Explorer network), had 10 days to study three target options and decide which opportunity would make the most scientific sense. After much debate, they decided to take an image of the planet's rings.
Mission planners calculated the needed maneuvers and sent the commands to the spacecraft. The students had been studying Saturn prior to the project, so they had some idea of what the mission entailed.
The "Cassini Scientist for a Day" activity helped them understand how much time it takes to gather scientific information, and how complicated it is to make decisions. The NASA Web site quotes the kids' teacher, Kathy Cooper, as saying, "I was stunned to hear a fourth grader saying, 'You need a good eye and have to be patient, because science isn't quick--we didn't learn about the universe overnight; it takes time,'" Cooper says. "The activity brought a higher level of thinking; the y kept coming up with good questions."
Build Your Own Rocket Ship
Michigan's Southfield School was the nation's first to be designated a NASA Explorer School. In early 2006, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, announced a $ 2,500 grant to students in Southfield, Michigan, to help them design, build and launch their own rocket. Part of NASA's Student Launch Initiative, the project helps students learn more about engineering and teamwork through a hands-on approach to create and launch rockets with payloads.
The Student Launch Initiative is jointly managed by the Marshall Center in partnership with the Huntsville Area Rocketry Association, a group of rocket enthusiasts and engineers who launch their own rockets. Each participating student team designs, builds and tests its own rockets, while documenting their progress on a Web site. Students can request guidance from professional engineers during the design and testing phases. The teams also learn problem-solving skills, how to prepare and present proposals, and how to budget.
The teams display and launch their rockets in a competition. Competing rockets carry a tracking device and a recoverable science payload weighing between one quarter and one half-pound. The rocket must reach an altitude of one mile during flight and be reusable. After flight, the team collects data from the payload, analyzes it, and reports the results to Marshall Center engineers, the project's mentors, who evaluate each rocket and determine the winners. The winning teams receive a school trophy.
How to Become an Explorer School
According to the Web site, competitive applications are accepted and selection of the NASA Explorer School teams occurs each spring. Up to 50 teams will be added each year, for a maximum total of 150 teams.
Recommend NASA's Explorer Schools Issues vQuestion by traui: Do you believe the NASA "lost" the moon landing video tapes on purpose? The moon landing is questioned every minuted at Yahoo Answers. Now they lost the tapes. Can that happen by accident? Best answer for Do you believe the NASA "lost" the moon landing video tapes on purpose?:
Answer by Mephistopheles
Unlikely. The tapes must have been stolen or never existed.
Answer by stealth_n700ms
Of course it can... Can your house catch fire? Of course, it's unlikely... If this was 10 years ago... and I said, can we get attacked on our homeland? It's not impossible. If you're suggesting that we never went to the moon, you're dead wrong. --Rob
Answer by scoobyd3
And here it is...I guess I have been looking hard enough cause this is the first question that has the conspiracy theory undertones. I was wondering how long it would take for me to see one after I read that article. Here is an anology that may help you understand how a tape could get lost. Go to a college library. Look at how many books they have. Now think of what would happen if a book was not put back where it belonged. Now think of how many tapes NASA would have in its archives.
Answer by non_moritati
I wondered about that, seems pretty convenient.
Answer by Marianna
Aaah, now I understand why they want to go to the moon again: They need to make a new tape.... But seriously, I think this is either just a typical civil-servant-like screw-up (considering how H U G E NASA's archive must be), or some very wealthy collector managed to have it "stolen" for his/her collection.
Answer by Bigger is Better
No.
Answer by arwyayen23
If you actually read a paper or watch the news... the tapes are not lost in the sense that they can't possibly be found, or that they have no idea where they are... Simply put, records that old have been moved around, and analyzed many times over 40 years! You try finding an old home video that old... bet you can't. NASA has made it clear that they have asked all centers to check their archives for the videos... NASA has thousands upon thousands of video, audio, and data information... BESIDES that, just because the original is not available at the moment doesn't mean that thousands of copies of the famous Moon-walk are not available at the drop of the hat... Hundreds of thousands of people have the video on their computers, on video, and many other media... If NASA really "lost" the video as you are implying what would be the reason? Especially when all you have to do is search the internet, and you'll pull up thousands of sites with the video ready for download... It's Occam's Razor... What's the simplest explaination? That hundreds of thousand of NASA employees and contractors are ammased in a huge government cover-up and noone has EVER come forward... or that we really did go to the Moon... The truth will set you free...
Answer by Krynne
It would be more like the way good movies and tapes get "lost" at a local library. It either gets put away in the wrong place by someone, or someone knicks it. I am NOT going to go on about the moonlanding and whether it is real or an elaborate hoax. I'll just say I believe it happened and that's that!
Answer by crud
Don't really care either way. I lost my old 8 track tapes too. There are copies anyway so who cares.
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