April 27, 2007
NASA Videoconference
"Did you know the shuttle transporter crawler gets 35 feet to the gallon?"
Facilitated a videoconference today for the Riverbend Technology Institute with 2 classes from Brown Academy and the NASA Digital Learning Network. This school has a magnet curriculum and has become a NASA Explorer school (more here).
This interactive field trip involved a studio at NASA with a Chromakey backdrop from which teir instructor presented a variety of multimedia and hands-on demonstrations (liquid nitrogen and the balloon trick!). This guy was awesome and he officially is doing my dream job (probably a little late for me to get on with NASA). On our end we had two classrooms connected in Fletcher Hall, and students were able to ask questions, perform tasks as examples, and even see the other classroom here on campus when they asked questions.
Prep for this involved teacher's preparing their students for the experience with lessons, setup and test of the videoconference (nearly had issues even after successful tests, but cool-headed troubleshooting prevailed), and making contact with the folks at NASA.
NASA provides these experiences for free, but they only ask for students and teachers to fill out a feedback form online in order to better their program an to report back on what they are accomplishing. (Good assessment!)
I'm going out to buy a telescope tonight. Woo-hoo!
Posted by cmwillis at April 27, 2007 10:05 AM | TrackBack