"NASA is inviting potential partners to help the agency achieve its strategic goals for education. Using its unique missions, discoveries, and assets, NASA supports education inside and outside the formal classroom to inspire and motivate educators and learners of all ages in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The agency is seeking unfunded partnerships with organizations to engage new or broader audiences across a national scale. NASA recognizes the benefit of leveraging those unique resources and abilities that partners can provide in order to improve efficiency and maximize impact of its STEM efforts. This announcement requests information from organizations interested in working with NASA to improve STEM education in America." More
Results tagged “Education”
Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves, MIT
"With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages--simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens. ... Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. "I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch ... powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android," Negroponte said. "Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android."
Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction, Dvice
"What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa."
Keith's note: If you read NASA Watch often enough you know I tend to focus a lot on the education and public outreach that NASA does, crowd sourcing, open source computing, etc. When I came across this story my jaw dropped. I had seen hints of this when I was in Nepal and visited the Khumjung school and when I saw Sherpa children playing with laptops in remote villages where small scale hydro systems provided only rudimentary power. I have an OLPC XO laptop so I have an idea what they have to work with. But this story from Ethiopia just stunned me. The take home lesson? Perhaps education and public outreach as practiced by NASA and other agencies and organizations needs to just drop the trendy gimmicks and focus in on the most basic enablers of learning. Imagine the cadre of coders and spacecraft designers NASA could cause to arise form all sectors of the economy and regions of the America ...
Twenty-three microgravity experiments designed by participants of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP) will become part of space history Oct. 7.
Students around the world have the opportunity to suggest names for an asteroid that will be visited by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft later this decade.
"The first of these pioneering agreements, concerning a coordinating centre to be established in the East Asian region (in China), was signed on Tuesday 21 August 2012 by a consortium of institutes: the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA, Peking University), Beijing Planetarium and Yunnan Astronomical Observatory. The consortium is supported in their efforts by various important partners including the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), the East Asian Core Observatories Association (EACOA), and Pyongyang Astronomical Observatory (PAO). A second regional node will be established in the South East Asian region (in Thailand) and coordinated by the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT)." More
"NASA's Office of Education has selected more than 200 organizations across the country to receive Summer of Innovation (SoI) mini-grants. Each award has a maximum value of $2,500. This investment is designed to expand NASA's education network and help the agency keep middle school students engaged in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities throughout the summer break and beyond. Last month, NASA announced it was seeking collaborators to infuse NASA-themed STEM content into existing summer and after school programs for middle school students. The agency received more than 500 proposals in response to this solicitation."
NASA Set To Host Future Female Explorers
"Eighty-four female high school students from 29 states will plan a simulated mission to Mars and experience life as an engineer or scientist when NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston hosts two events focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in June and July. The Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars project, or WISH, is sponsoring two six-day summer camps for rising high school seniors."
"Each funded NASA EPSCoR proposal is expected to establish research activities that will make significant contributions to the strategic research and technology development priorities of one or more of the Mission Directorates or the OCT and contribute to the overall research infrastructure, science and technology capabilities, higher education, and economic development of the jurisdiction. If submitted, Notices of Intent are due on July 20, 2012 and proposals are due on August 14, 2012."
Rocket Week Launching at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
"Students and educators from across the country will experience what it is like to be a rocket scientist during "Rocket Week," June 16-22, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. More than 100 participants will receive hands-on training in building payloads for spaceflight, learn the basics of rocketry and develop activities for the classroom through the fifth annual RockOn! workshop for university-level participants and the concurrent second annual Wallops Rocket Academy for Teachers and Students (WRATS) for high school teachers."
The SpaceX Dragon capsule, which on Tuesday became the first commercially developed and built spacecraft to launch to the International Space Station, is carrying among its cargo a suite of 15 science experiments designed by students.
SpaceX Dragon Transports Student Experiments to Space Station
"The SpaceX Dragon capsule, which on Tuesday became the first commercially developed and built spacecraft to launch to the International Space Station, is carrying among its cargo a suite of 15 science experiments designed by students. Known collectively as Aquarius, the experiments will assess the effects of microgravity on physical, chemical and biological systems. The students have been immersed in every facet of research, from definition of the investigation to experiment design, proposal writing and a formal NASA proposal review for selection of flight experiments."
NASA Announces 2012 Space Technology Research Fellowship Grants
"NASA has selected the 2012 class of Space Technology Research Fellows. Forty-eight students will receive graduate student fellowships from NASA's Space Technology Program to pursue master's or doctoral degrees in relevant space technology disciplines at their respective institutions. Through the Space Technology Research Fellowships Program, NASA is providing the nation with a pipeline of highly skilled engineers and technologists to improve U.S. competitiveness while developing the intellectual and technological foundation needed for future science and exploration missions. The program is part of a renewed emphasis on technology at NASA, which is designed to inspire the nation and contribute to an innovation-driven economy."
"As the President said at the launch of his Educate to Innovate campaign to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, "I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things."
That's why today, we are excited to highlight a new effort that responds to the President's call to action: the Maker Education Initiative (MEI).
With leadership from Dale Dougherty, a White House Champion of Change and founder of Maker Faire, MEI has founding sponsorship from Cognizant, Intel, and O'Reilly Media.
The mission of the Maker Education Initiative is to create more opportunities for young people to make, and--by making--build confidence, foster creativity, and spark interest in science, technology, engineering, math, the arts--and learning as a whole. MEI wants young people to join--and eventually lead--the growing Maker Movement."
More at The OSTP Blog
The Space Foundation's annual Student Art Contest winners are developing a reputation for actual space travel. Digital versions of last year's winners are all permanently in residence on the International Space Station. Two of this year's winners have traveled an additional 277,000 miles to the Moon and back.
Today, the Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) launched a video contest, "Why Explore Space?" to hear from the American public about why space exploration matters to them. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas by submitting a video. The creator of the winning entry wins an iPad3. Entries must be submitted by May 19. From there, the public will vote on the best videos.
The top five videos will become semi-finalists and a panel of judges from the Coalition will crown the winner. Entries will be housed on the Coalition website, with the winner's entry moving on to Washington, DC to be shared with national leaders.
Today, the Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) launched a video contest, "Why Explore Space?" to hear from the American public about why space exploration matters to them. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas by submitting a video. The creator of the winning entry wins an iPad3.
NASA Announces 2012 Summer Of Innovation Project
"NASA's third annual Summer of Innovation (SOI) project is underway. The project is providing hands-on learning opportunities for middle school students and educators through NASA-unique science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educational activities during the summer school break. SOI is a key component of the agency's broader education program to increase student interest in STEM courses, particularly among those in underserved sectors of the academic community. SOI uses NASA's out-of-this-world missions and technology programs to boost interest in STEM among middle school students by offering interactive learning experiences. This year, a major portion of the SOI content focus will be on Curiosity, a NASA flagship science mission currently en route to Mars and scheduled to land Aug. 6."
Students from across the nation will gather at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston May 2-5 for the annual NASA Explorer Schools Symposium. These future leaders in science, technology, education and math, or STEM, have completed research investigations and will present their findings to a team of NASA scientists and engineers, student peers and educator
SpaceRef had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Leroy Chiao at the 28th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Dr. Chiao is a veteran of four flights into space and was the Expedition 10 commander and NASA science officer on his last mission to the International Space Station.
Mission-X is a worldwide educational initiative supported by ESA and national space agencies to encourage healthy and active lifestyles among children aged 8-12 years. Astronauts are inspiring children to eat healthily and exercise regularly.