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November |
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| TABLE OF CONTENTS | CLICK ON THE RED LINKS BELOW TO VIEW ARTICLES | If you missed the "The best conference EVER! "M.Y. S.P.A.C.E. ROCKS!" |
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From SpaceRef.com |
Satellite Images of Antarctica: The Whole Picture | |
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Hot Topic |
Report: Sweeping Education Reform Needed To Bolster American Competitiveness |
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News From NOAA |
A Call For Presenters
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News From NASA |
NASA Study Finds Rising Arctic
Storm Activity Sways Sea Ice, Climate And Climate Change Seeps into the Sea |
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Education Tools |
Auditioning Now |
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Education News |
Discovery Education and 3M Announce America's Top Young Scientist and Top Science Teacher |
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Go to SEA's Home Page |
Visit the Satellite Educators Association home page |
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Report: Sweeping Education Reform Needed
To Bolster American Competitiveness A revamped 21st century education system is central to American economic competitiveness. Domestic and international economies have shifted. New skills are needed for the workforce. And there are significant achievement gaps to be overcome in order for the United States to be able to compete with the rest of the world. This according to a new report released today that calls on federal, state, and local policymakers to make a concerted effort to refocus K-12 education on 21st century skills. "The nation needs to do a much better job teaching and measuring advanced, 21st century skills that are the indispensable currency for participation, achievement and competitiveness in the global economy," according to the new report, titled 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness, which was sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the Ford Motor Company Fund, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and the National Education Association. Among other things, it cites radical changes in the economy of the United States, along with the demand for a shifted skill set required for the new economy, as the major factors indicating a need for immediate action. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, there's been a dramatic shift away from manufacturing toward the service sector. Between 1995 and 2005, 3 million manufacturing jobs were lost, while 17 million service sector jobs were created. And as of 1999, the second-largest segment of the American labor force, according to another report, was in information services, at 41 percent. And this shift has created a demand for a workforce with a different set of skills from what was required just a few decades ago. And the burden is on K-12 schools to develop these skills in today's students. But, at the same time, there are significant hurdles to be overcome. These include a continued gap in achievement between students who belong to various ethnic and economic groups, as well as an achievement gap between the overall student population in the United States and the student populations of other countries, as measured in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), in particular in the category of problem-solving or cognitive skills. "The nation needs to do a much better job teaching and measuring advanced, 21st century skills that are the indispensable currency for participation, achievement and competitiveness in the global economy," the report stated. "Beyond the assessment of reading, mathematics and science, the United States does not assess other essential skills that are in demand in the 21st century. All Americans, not just an elite few, need 21st century skills that will increase their marketability, employability and readiness for citizenship...." Among those critical skills cited by the 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness report are:
"The challenges workers face don't come in a multiple-choice format and typically don't have a single right answer," the report said. In terms of the implications for federal policy, the report made several recommendations, including:
It also made several recommendations for state and local policymakers, including collaboration with business to create a "21st century agenda," integrating 21st century skills into graduation requirements, infusing teacher preparation and development with 21st century skills training, and appointing assistant superintendents for 21st century learning, among many other suggestions. "This is a seminal moment in history for education and competitiveness," the report concluded. "The fundamental shifts in the economy demand bold and creative policies. Formalizing the connection between education and competitiveness with an agenda focused on 21st century skills--which are widely acknowledged and supported by voters, employers, educators, researchers and thought leaders--is the starting point." Further information about the report can be found here. The entire report can be downloaded in PDF format here. _____________________________________________________ |
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Satellite Images of
Antarctica: The Whole Picture The first high-resolution satellite mosaic of Antarctica was created by Byrd Polar Research Center in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency. The image revealed features never seen before, such as ice streams some 800 kilometers long. Click on the image for a hi-res picture A decade after using an Earth-observing satellite to image Antarctica to create the first high-resolution mosaic of the continent, Ken Jezek hopes the world's space agencies will pull together their spaceborne resources to map the cryosphere in unprecedented detail and breadth. The International Polar Year (IPY) project will rely on countries from Russia to China to the United Kingdom to use the constellation of Earth-observing satellites to capture data about ice sheets and sea ice in areas undergoing rapid changes. GIIPSY, for Global Inter-agency IPY Polar Snapshot Year, will use a range of satellite frequencies, from microwave to optical, to create a series of different images for a benchmark that scientists can use to track future changes. "The challenges are formidable," concedes Jezek, a geophysicist with Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus. "We're trying to get everyone who currently has a satellite operating to coordinate [their efforts], and to coordinate their acquisitions in such a way that the burden of acquisitions doesn't fall on any single agency, which may not have the mandate or resources to do that job." Jezek sees GIIPSY as an ambitious successor to a project that BPRC coordinated with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA beginning in 1997 called RADARSAT Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP).Launched in November 1995 by NASA from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Canada's RADARSAT-1 satellite featured a powerful synthetic aperture radar that allowed it to image Earth day or night, in all weather and through cloud cover, smoke and haze.In less than a month in 1997, RADARSAT-1 had collected the imagery necessary to create the first high-resolution mosaic of the continent. On each 12-minute pass over Antarctica, the radar imaged 100-kilometer-wide swaths up to 2,500 kilometers long. The mosaic combined more than 4,500 overlapping images with a resolution of 25 meters, each pixel about the size of a classroom. A second mission in 2000 collected additional imagery around Antarctica's perimeter and its fast-moving glaciers, to capture data about areas most likely to have changed over the last three years. "Our observations discovered several very large ice streams, one of which extends an equivalent distance along the Mississippi from New Orleans to Cairo, Ill," Jezek said, about 800 kilometers long. "These are very large features." Scientists also used the imagery to acquire velocity measurements. Jezek explained the satellite detected the motion of the ice during the observation period. That helped the team create a velocity mosaic of most of the continent. The rate and direction of motion reveals important information about the forces acting on ice sheets and glaciers, as well as about the rate at which ice is pouring into the coastal seas, and enables scientists to predict how the ice sheet might respond to changing global climate, according to Jezek. He said the project, which is wrapping up after more than 10 years, also taught the team how to manage an instrument that required intensive data collection while competing with commercial interests for satellite time, and how to collaborate with international partners. He hopes those lessons will help GIIPSY realize its potential. "It's a significant follow-on from RAMP that sort of builds on our experiences in managing resources, doing international collaboration, and trying to do some interesting science," Jezek said.Its goals include taking snapshots of rapidly changing ice sheets and glaciers, areas of high-latitude snow cover that serve as major sources of fresh water, and spatial distribution of permafrost. The imagery will help scientists understand everything from ice dynamics to how permafrost responds to climate change."If we use everybody's satellites, we have a chance to go from the pole to the coast," Jezek also noted. Routine, good high-resolution imagery of Antarctica doesn't really exist between about 80 degrees and 90 degrees South latitude because the orbits of previous satellites used for these types of missions didn't include those areas. Even the most recently created satellite image of the continent, the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA), had to fill in the gap between 82.5 degrees and the pole with lower resolution data.Jezek said the GIIPSY effort will also provide important data on Arctic sea ice, which many scientists believe will entirely disappear in the summer in the not-to-distant future. "There hasn't been a good, internationally coordinated effort to map the dynamics of Arctic sea ice, even though it's recognized as a major science problem," he said.
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___________________________________________________ NOAA's Satellite Direct Readout Conference
NOAA invites science teachers and their students from
universities,
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Discovery Education and 3M Announce America's Top Young Scientist and Top
Science Teacher
Discovery Education and 3M today announced "America's Top
Young Scientist" and "America's Top Science Teacher" -- winners of the
2008 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge (YSC). Melissa Rey
of Chesterfield, MO was selected as the grand prize winner of the student
competition, capturing the prestigious title and $50,000 in U.S. Savings
Bonds ($25,000 cash value). Edward Evans from Welch, WV was named top
teacher, winning a $5,000 cash prize, the Discovery Education multimedia
service suite (video-based learning products for the classroom), and
numerous products from 3M to be used throughout the school year.
On October 5-6, 2008, ten students and five teachers were
challenged to defy gravity, bend light and more at the YSC finals held at
NASA's world-renowned Goddard Space Flight Center located near Washington,
D.C. Presented with multiple rounds of space-themed challenges, students
and teachers were evaluated by a panel of judges on their science skills
and their ability to share scientific knowledge with others both in-person
and on-camera. The judging panel consisted of Steve Jacobs -- an
accomplished scientist, educator and author, along with several 3M
scientists and NASA representatives, including a former astronaut. All ten
student finalists will be featured in a Science Channel special airing
January 18, 2009.
"Congratulations to Melissa, Edward, and to all those who
participated in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge,"
said David Zaslav, President and CEO, Discovery Communications. "Discovery
is proud to continue our commitment to supporting middle school education,
and encouraging the next generation of American scientists to excel in
science and technology. While today we recognize the top student and
teacher prize winners, all students who participated in this year's
challenge are winners."
"It's an exciting moment when you have the opportunity to
celebrate science achievement among our country's top students and
teachers," added Robert MacDonald, President, 3M Foundation. "These
talented finalists all represent hope for our future as we work to foster
innovation and new discoveries for years to come. We at 3M congratulate
them all."
By advancing to the finalist round of the Discovery
Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, all student finalists were awarded
a $1,000 cash prize, a personalized competition medal, an assortment of 3M
products, and full Discovery Channel DVD sets including the acclaimed
PLANET EARTH series
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Climate Change Seeps into the Sea
Good news has turned out to be bad. The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess
heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the
atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the
ocean to swallow. It's changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more
acidic and otherwise inhospitable, threatening many important marine
organisms. Scientists call ocean acidification "the other carbon dioxide problem."
They warn that because it causes such fundamental changes in the ocean, it
could impact millions of people who depend on the ocean for food and
resources. "The growing amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean could have a
bigger effect on life on Earth than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says
JPL's Charles Miller, deputy principal investigator for NASA's new Orbiting
Carbon Observatory, scheduled to launch next January. The ocean takes in and stores most of the heat from the sun that is
deposited at Earth's surface -- heat that would otherwise be melting land
ice and warming the atmosphere. The ocean also absorbs about one third of
the carbon dioxide that humans now put into the air. The rest is taken up by
terrestrial vegetation and soils or remains in the atmosphere, increasing
the greenhouse effect. "The ocean surface acts like a sponge to soak up excess carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere," says Scott Doney, a senior scientist in marine
chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.
Much of the extra dissolved carbon is in the ocean’s upper few thousand
feet. However, at high latitudes, surface water quickly cools, becomes
saltier and denser and sinks, carrying the dissolved carbon to some of the
deepest parts of the ocean. Mix carbon dioxide with water and the result is carbonic acid. After that
first simple chemical reaction comes a slightly more complicated series of
changes in seawater chemistry. The final outcome is a lowering of the
ocean's pH -- meaning the ocean is more acidic, and, ironically, a reduction
in a particular form of carbon -- carbonate ion -- that many marine
organisms need to make shells and skeletal material. The lower pH and lack
of carbonate ion have serious consequences for life in the ocean.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
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A new NASA study shows that the rising frequency and
intensity of arctic storms over the last half century, attributed to
progressively warmer waters, directly provoked acceleration of the rate of
arctic sea ice drift, long considered by scientists as a bellwether of
climate change. Click here to read the rest of the story _________________________________________________________________ The Endeavour Center will be sponsoring OCO and NOAA-N Prime Educator Launch Conferences in 2009 with other co-sponsors. Download Flyer Download Registration Form I’m looking for quality K-12 STEM workshop presentations. I encourage educators to present short Space & STEM lesson plans with “hands-on” activities that work well to educate and inspire students about science and engineering. The NASA OCO satellite will launch on a Taurus XL booster on 15 January 2009 at 2:58AM. The NOAA NOAA-N Prime Satellite will tentatively launch on a Delta II Rocket on 4 February 2009 (2:22PM). The Endeavour Center will waive conference fee, pay for travel and lodging, and $100 material for any printing/supplies for your K-12 STEM workshop. You can expect 15-20 teachers in your workshop. Travel airfare ticket must be purchased and scanned receipt sent to Tim Strickland by December 5, 2008. Each workshop presenter will be 1 hour and 20 minutes and repeated twice over a three session format from 10AM to 3:00 PM as done at the last OSTM/Jason-2 Educator Launch Conferences. We have six to eight openings for each conference for K-12 STEM workshops. Let your other educators know of the opportunity to share a quality lesson plan with other teachers, see a rocket launch and interact with NASA and NOAA Program Managers, Space Scientists and Engineers providing presentations at the dinner banquet. Orbiting Carbon Observatory Educator Launch Conference tentative scheduled for January 14-15, 2009 (Wednesday/Thursday): NOAA-N Prime Educator Launch Conference tentatively scheduled for 3-4 February 2009 (Tuesday/Wednesday) Please send an e-mail to me Nina.Jackson@noaa.gov, if interested in doing a K-12 teacher workshop for either or both conferences. Please provide the following: Workshop Title, Short Description, Grade Level (Elementary, Middle or High School). We will also need a short bio and picture if you have not presented at a past Educator Launch Conference. I greatly appreciate your participation. _________________________________________________________________ Commerce Secretary Gutierrez Announces $900,000 in Education Grants to Pacific Northwest
The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration “This $900,000 investment will help enhance and expand locally relevant, hands-on environmental education for K-12 in the Pacific Northwest,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said. “I hope these grants help inspire today's children to take an interest in protecting and managing oceans and watersheds, which are vital resources for our nation.” Funding has been awarded to:
2008 is the first year that funding has been available for B-WET grants in the Pacific Northwest, New England and the Gulf of Mexico. Previously, the program has funded successful projects in Chesapeake Bay, California and Hawaii. Projects are selected through a rigorous competitive process. NOAA’s B-WET Program partners with awardees to provide environmental education for students as well as related professional development for educators. These meaningful watershed educational experiences combine classroom learning with firsthand experience to connect students with their watershed, reinforce an ethic of responsible citizenship, and promote academic achievement. "The B-WET program is at the core of meeting NOAA's education mandate," said NOAA Director of Education Louisa Koch. "Providing high quality programs that connect learning in the classroom to what is happening in the world outside is a key part of getting kids excited about science and understanding how we interact with the environment." All B-WET-funded projects emphasize sustained, hands-on, environmental activities that are aligned with academic learning standards. The program supports regional education and environmental priorities through local implementation. NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources. ____________________________________________________________ SciJinks Weather Laboratory The SciJinks Weather Laboratory at http://scijinks.gov is a website for middle school-age children, sponsored by both NASA and NOAA. Skyjacks presents weather and other Earth science topics via games, stories, and fun facts, as well as simple, concise answer to often-asked how and why questions. For example, answers will be found to "Why is the sky blue?", "How does a hurricane form?" and "Why do we have seasons?"Two new "how & whys" have recently been added: * How did earth's atmosphere form? * Why doesn't the atmosphere just float off into space? Other how and why topics are listed at scijinks.gov/weather/howwhy. Additional weather-related resources for teachers are available at scijinks.gov/en/educators. ____________________________________________________________
How To Check the Levels of
Atmospheric Ozone Near Your House
Are you in danger of suffering from increased UV radiation
exposure? If you live on earth, then you are! In fact, NASA, ESA, JAXA,
and more are working on solutions to the ozone layer problem. The ozone
hole, first discussed in the 1970s, has brought great attention to the
little talked about stratospheric layer of the atmosphere since that time.
Now, you can check on the level of ozone in your home state or country anywhere in the world by following a few easy steps.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: 10 minutes
Here's How:
Tips:
What You Need:
___________________________________________________________ Auditioning Now
Scientist Kevin Petty, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
studies hurricanes. He is helping to improve hurricane forecasts and
warnings by learning how to better predict the intensity and duration of
hurricanes. Your weather report should include current temperature, cloud cover and precipitation conditions around the country, as well as a discussion of regions of high and low air pressure and major fronts, and an explanation of how these relate to the weather. Activity Description ______________________________________________________________
M.Y. S.P.A.C.E. Photos from the conference posted.
M.Y. S.P.A.C.E.
Be a M.Y.
S.P.A.C.E. Teacher
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announced $900,000 in NOAA Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET)
grants to five Pacific Northwest recipients.
