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Our Vision |
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| TABLE OF CONTENTS | CLICK ON THE RED LINKS BELOW TO VIEW ARTICLES | If you missed the |
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Hot Topic |
Earth Impacts Linked to Human-Caused Climate Change |
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A Letter From Lis |
Know Your Audience | |
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News From NOAA |
A New Wave of Learning
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News From NASA |
Send Your Name to the Moon With New
Lunar Mission And New NASA Tool Allows Amateurs To Explore The Ionosphere From The Inside |
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Education News |
NASA, NIA Announce NASA Education Television Partnership | |
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Education Tools |
Weather Patterns And Meteorology: An Educator's Resource for Inquiry-Based Learning for Grades 5-9 |
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Lesson Fun For SEA Members |
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Ocean Mapping |
New Ocean-Mapping Satellite Primed for June Launch | |
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Go to SEA's Home Page |
Visit the Satellite Educators Association home page |
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Earth Impacts Linked to
Human-Caused Climate Change A new NASA-led study shows that
human-caused climate change has impacted a wide range of Earth's natural
systems, from permafrost thawing to plants blooming earlier across Europe to
lakes declining in productivity in Africa. The team conducted a "joint attribution"
study in which they showed, first, that at the global scale, about 90
percent of observed changes in diverse physical and biological systems are
consistent with warming. Other driving forces, such as land use change from
forest to agriculture, were ruled out as having significant influence on the
observed impacts. "Humans are influencing climate through
increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the warming is causing impacts on
physical and biological systems that are now attributable at the global
scale and in North America, Europe, and Asia," said Rosenzweig.
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NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration
journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft. _________________________________________________________________
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A Letter From Lis
Elisabeth Cohen Note from the editor: While she is working through this time we will reprint some of her most tantalizing letters from the past years. This from September 2007 Dear Satellite Educators, Abraham Lincoln stated, “When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.” Lincoln understood that to get your point across, you need to know your audience and what motivates them. While attending the American Meteorological Society policy colloquium, I participated in an exercise where we needed to choose a particular senator and make climate change mitigation recommendations. We chose to make recommendations to a senator from a coal producing town. We thought this senator would be very conservative because the state gets profits from the coal industry and many of his constituents would lose their jobs if coal was no longer used. We suggested that this senator vote to make coal cleaner. This would increase the amount of jobs in his state and would continue to keep the coal in trusty in tact. We had a much greater chance of success because we understood his interests. How should we speak to get the information across? Teachers and scientists often use jargon. Policy makers are not used to hearing about learning objectives and benchmarks. They don’t know about anthropogenic forcings or radiative balance. We must keep our jargon to a minimum and clear up misconceptions. This is how we get people to listen. “A person hears only what they understand.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe In addition to understanding a person’s background, it is important that we understand his/hertheir current situation. For example, are your students taking many classes? Are they preparing for college and would like to be more involved? Is your boss having a difficult time with his/her family? Is your representative meeting with the president in a few days? Acknowledging what is happening with your audience will make you more effective as a speaker, as it will foster a sense of empathy which in turn fosters understanding. I encourage you to find out more about your audiences!
Sincerely,
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Second Life is a 3-D virtual world built and owned entirely by its residents. Created by Linden Lab of San Francisco, the web site population and visitors are growing explosively. Linden Lab claims more than five million international inhabitants and NOAA’s island has had over 5,800 unique visitors representing approximately 4,000 hours since the beginning of the year. Targeting the next generation of scientists, NOAA’s site
teaches visitors, called “avatars,” about our changing planet through
“immersive storytelling,” according to Eric Hackathorn, who developed the
NOAA islands with Second Life design company Aimee Weber
Studios. “Visitors experience environments they would not otherwise have access to,” says Hackathorn, who works for NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. Colorful 3-D graphics and action-packed animations help participants understand the complex science behind climate, ecosystems, and weather. In this virtual classroom, “students,” can get together from all over the world and ride through the eye of a hurricane, soar through the layers of the atmosphere on a weather balloon, or view underwater creatures from the safety of a NOAA virtual submersible; all while being exposed to the real-life data and research incorporated into the adventures.
In NOAA’s virtual world, melting glaciers and rising sea levels promote potential interactive discussion on climate change. Other locations raise awareness about natural hazards such as tsunamis, hurricanes, wild fires, and oil spills. Effects of the changing environment are vividly portrayed by stops such as the one that informs the visitor about harmful algal blooms. __________________________________________________________________
New NASA Tool Allows Amateurs To
Explore The Ionosphere From The Inside Last week at the Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colorado, NASA released a 4D live model of the Earth's ionosphere. Without leaving home, anyone can fly through the layer of ionized gas that encircles Earth at the edge of space itself. All that is required is an Internet connection and a free copy of Google Earth. NASA calls the ionosphere the "last wisp of Earth's atmosphere that astronauts leave behind when they enter space. The realm of the ionosphere stretches from 50 to 500 miles above Earth's surface where the atmosphere thins to near-vacuum and exposes itself to the fury of the sun. Solar ultraviolet radiation breaks apart molecules and atoms creating a globe-straddling haze of electrons and ions." Using a Google Earth interface, users can fly above, around and through these regions getting a true 4D view of the situation. "The fourth dimension is time. This is a real-time system updated every 10 minutes," said W. Kent Tobiska, president of Space Environment Technologies and chief scientist of its Space Weather Division. The proper name of the system is CAPS, short for Communication Alert and Prediction System. Earth-orbiting satellites feed the system up-to-the-minute information on solar activity; the measurements are then converted to electron densities by physics-based computer codes. It is important to note, Tobiska said, that CAPS reveals the ionosphere not only as it is now, but also as it is going to be the near future. According to propagation specialist Carl Luetzelschwab, K9LA, this model "can provide Amateur Radio operators a broad view of what the ionosphere is doing 'now.' This broad view is due to the fact that the resolution in the color coding schemes only gives coarse estimates of the six parameters available." Luetzelschwab, former editor of National Contest Journal (NCJ), writes a propagation column in NCJ and other publications "This is an exciting development," said NASA solar physicist Lika Guhathakurta. "The ionosphere is important to pilots, ham radio operators, earth scientists and even soldiers. Using this new 4D tool, they can monitor and study the ionosphere as if they're actually inside it." Guhathakurta made his comments on the NASA Web site. Click here to read more. _________________________________________________________________ NASA, NIA Announce NASA Education Television PartnershipPress Release SAN JOSE, Calif., May 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale announced Wednesday the launch of NASA Education TV (NASA eTV), a partnership with the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) to produce new educational television programs for distribution on NASA Television and the Internet. The announcement was part of Dale's keynote address at the NASA Future Forum in San Jose, Calif., where NASA and California leaders are meeting to discuss how space exploration benefits Silicon Valley, the state of California and the nation through discovery, innovation and inspiration. "California's Silicon Valley is a launch pad for high-tech ideas and businesses, many of which were inspired by NASA scientific discoveries and technology advances," Dale said. "America's long-term space exploration goals support economic growth right here, right now in California communities, and throughout the country." NASA eTV aims to engage young people in the excitement and challenges the future holds for America's space program. Designed for grades K-12 and young adults, the short video snippets will be available on demand through the Internet during the 2008 and 2009 school years. This will allow teachers unlimited options in the timing, sequence and pacing of the video content for greater instructional flow control. "We realize that to sustain U.S. economic competitiveness, it is imperative that students have a solid educational foundation to be prepared for professional careers in the technologically complex 21st century," said Robert Lindberg, NIA's president and executive director. "Working jointly with NASA, NIA has developed a comprehensive approach to producing visual media that teachers will find easier to integrate into their classroom instruction." Each NASA eTV program will consist of 5- to 10-minute video segments designed to meet identified teacher needs. The elementary school-level segments will provide a balanced introduction to the fields of science and engineering and be aligned to national education standards. The middle school-level segments will be aligned with mathematics learning standards and the relevance of math to 21st century careers. The high school-level segments will build on the engineering and science behind NASA projects and missions. The general public programs will be aimed at the 18- to 34-year-old audience and focus on the impact of space exploration, scientific discovery, aeronautics research and NASA-derived technologies on society. The San Jose Future Forum was hosted by NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose as part of a yearlong series of events marking NASA's 50th anniversary. Other NASA forum participants included Ames Director S. Pete Worden, astronaut Rex Walheim, who just returned to Earth from a mission to deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus Laboratory to the International Space Station, Assistant Administrator for Education Joyce Winterton, and James Norman, director of the Constellation Systems Division in NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. "NASA Ames is on the cutting edge of exploration," Worden said. "Here, government, businesses and learning institutions are forging partnerships to develop technologies for a new generation of space explorers. We're at the dawn of an exciting new era that will help us explore our solar system and make life on this planet and others sustainable." The forum was sponsored by Aerojet of Sacramento, Calif., Google of Mountain View, Calif., Jacobs Technology of Tullahoma, Tenn., Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md., Nortel of Toronto, Canada, Microsoft Research of Redmond, Wash., Symantec of Cupertino, Calif., and Raytheon of Waltham, Mass. For more information on NASA's 50th Anniversary Future Forums, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/50th/future_forums For complete biographical information about Dale, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/dale_bio.html For more information about the National Institute of Aerospace, visit: http://www.nianet.org ________________________________________________________________
2008 Satellite Direct Readout
Conference
NOAA invites science teachers and their students from universities, colleges and secondary schools in
the South Florida area to participate in a special day long event at
NOAA’s Satellite Direct Readout Conference scheduled for December
8-12, 2008, at the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel. The U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Satellite and Information Service
is hosting the 2008 Satellite Direct Readout Conference in Miami,
Florida, December 8-12, 2008. NOAA operates both Polar-orbiting
Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) and Geostationary
Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). The data from the NOAA satellites
are available to all countries and users world-wide, and are
utilized to support a variety of meteorological, oceanographic,
terrestrial, solar, climatic, and other specialized data collection
activities and services. During the next decade, the
launch of the GOES-R series of geostationary satellites and the NPOESS and
METOP series of polar-orbiting satellites will result in significant
changes. The changes brought about by these new satellite systems will affect
all current and future users of environmental satellites,
particularly those who receive data directly from the satellites. In time, all
users will need to modify or replace current receiving equipment and
basic processing software as the next generations of satellites begin
operation. The focus of the Conference will
be on current GOES and POES data access, distribution, and
preparing users for the upcoming changes to NOAA satellite programs. NOAA
will present users with information on APT, HRPT, GVAR, ARGOS DCS, GOES
DCS, LRIT, EMWIN, GEONETCast Americas and other NOAA systems. NOAA hopes to build on earlier
successes in 2002 and 2004, and to make the 2008 conference even better.
Approximately 200 administrators, managers and scientists from 29
countries participated in the last forum that was held in December, 2004. Conference website address:
http://directreadout.noaa.gov/miami08/ _________________________________________________________________ Wild Weather Adventure From SciJinks NOAA and NASA team together to give you some of the best educational tools on this planet! This project is called SciJinks and their website is just chock full of some of the greatest tools for your classroom. This month we feature the Wild Weather Adventure. By answering multiple choice or True/False questions the player(s) will move their research blimp around the world Play the Wild Weather Adventure game. Your weather research blimp will explore Earth and its weather. With luck, skill, and strategy, your students will race other weather research blimps to be first to travel all the way around the world and win the game. The student can play with their classmates, friends by themselves, or with a computer opponent. For every player’s turn in the Wild Weather Adventure Game, the player must answer either a multiple choice or true or false question. Each question is rated as easy, medium, or hard. Players choose which level to answer. Questions come up in random order. Note: Some questions are about world geography. A reference map is included with the game, and these questions allow extra time to refer to the map.
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Meteorology: An Educator's Resource for
Inquiry-Based Learning for Grades 5-9 Meteorology: An Educator's Resource for Inquiry-Based Learning for Grades 5-9 is written as a supplement to existing Earth and space science curricula for grades 5-9. The guide may be used in both formal and informal educational settings as well as at home. It should be used in conjunction with lectures, discussions, textbooks and other teaching material. This guide is not intended to be a complete course in meteorology; rather, its function is to assist educators in instilling excitement in learning about meteorology by permitting the learner to take increasing responsibility for his/her learning. The learner should experience "how we arrive at what we know," rather than memorizing what we know. This publication was developed to enhance the understanding of inquiry-based learning from the educator/teacher’s perspective as well as from the learner’s perspective. Inquiry-based learning has many levels. In general, inexperienced learners and younger learners will require more guidance than more-experienced and older learners who are better equipped to take responsibility for their learning. There are four levels of inquiry defined in this publication, confirmation-verification, structured inquiry, guided inquiry and open inquiry. The levels will be further defined and explained in the introductory chapter. |
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Graph temperatures on a sheet of graph paper to find a pattern.
Subject:
Mathematics & Science Click here to download activity pdf
___________________ New Ocean-Mapping Satellite Primed for June Launch (Here's a quiz: What does the satellite Jason 1 look like?) NASA and France are preparing to launch a new satellite next month to map Earth's rising sea levels and study their link to global climate change. The Jason 2 spacecraft is set to lift off atop a Delta 2 rocket on June 15 from Vandenberg Air Force in California on a joint mission to study the Earth's oceans and their currents. "Globally, on average, sea levels are rising," said Steven Neek of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters, in a Tuesday briefing. "This is a complex phenomenon which we need to understand better through flying new spacecraft." Since 1993, global sea levels have risen about 0.12 inches (3 millimeters) per year, or about twice the expected rate based on tide records from the past century, NASA officials said. Natural and human-made causes are responsible for the shift, Neek said. Jason 2's Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) is a joint NASA-French Space Agency effort and the third in a series of satellites to track global sea levels for climate studies. The spacecraft's immediate predecessor, Jason 1, launched in 2001 and is still operating today. Another U.S.-French satellite, TOPEX/Poseidon, launched in 1992 and scanned Earth's oceans for 13 years. "OSTM/Jason 2 will help create the first multi-decadal global record for understanding the vital roles of the ocean in climate change," said Lee-Lueng Fu, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. The new $433 million spacecraft is expected to orbit in tandem with Jason 1 some 830 miles (1,336 km) above Earth and double the amount of monitoring coverage of Earth's oceans, mission managers said. The satellite uses ocean altimetry and other tools to measure the height of the sea surface with an accuracy of within 1.3 inches (3.3 cm). The readings are also expected to yield information on the speed and direction of ocean currents, and serve as an indicator of the amount of heat in the water that can affect climate change, mission researchers said. In addition to NASA and the French Space Agency, the Jason 2 mission also includes participants at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the 20-nation weather satellite organization EUMETSAT. Researchers hope that by tying Jason 2 data into the international forecasting agencies, it will aid future predictions of ocean circulation fluctuations, weather patterns and climate change. "People in coastal areas will benefit from improved near-real-time data on ocean conditions, while people everywhere will benefit from better seasonal predictions resulting from the increased understanding of Earth system processes enabled by these measurements," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA's science directorate.
M.Y. S.P.A.C.E. Photos from the conference now posted.
M.Y. S.P.A.C.E. M.Y. S.P.A.C.E.
Be a M.Y.
S.P.A.C.E. Teacher
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 "Two children with laptop")
NOAA
is well known for conducting cutting-edge science. But did you know that
NOAA is blazing a new frontier in the amazing virtual world of Second Life?
What appears to be an entertaining computer game conveys serious science,
bringing to life esoteric research with an engaging virtual experience.
Sometimes
static, other times interactive, island stops serve the visitor a
comprehensive palette of knowledge like never before. For example, at the
NOAA real-time weather map, avatars can walk across a map of the U. S. and
experience the day’s weather as it changes from region to region. This
avatar is learning to chart the sea floor from a NOAA vessel.
