Inspiring Education

Project description

The mandate of the Inspiring Education team is to develop and implement projects to educate young people (Kindergarten to High School students) about space. These projects can range from something simple like a website to starting a space education company and developing educational materials, etc.
The SGC 2004 group brainstormed many ideas. While most of these ideas focused on targeting students, it was decided that the best way to reach a larger audience was to target teachers. By motivating teachers to incorporate space into teaching various disciplines and providing them with the appropriate tools, a much larger number of students could be reached. With this in mind, the SGC 2004 group selected three projects for development and implementation.

The first project is a space education web portal designed to make educational resources more accessible to educators. This project arose out of the realization that there are innumerable space-related educational materials and resources available on the internet, which makes it difficult for educators to choose one best suited to their needs. The idea is then to create a search engine that serves as a one-stop shop for an educator’s space education needs by providing links to existing resources through a database searchable by various criteria and containing peer reviews of the educational material. This project also entails a marketing campaign to promote the use of this portal among educators.

The second project consists of creating original educational material in the form of a space exhibit travelling with the IAC. This exhibit would be provided to schools in the host city prior to the IAC to increase awareness about space in general and space-related events taking place in the students’ community. The students might also have a chance to create their own space projects for display at the IAC.

Finally, the 2004 Inspiring Education working group also decided to contribute to the space textbook project at the University of Illinois. This textbook is aimed at Grades 7-8 and contains units relating space to a wide variety of disciplines so that space can be used as a teaching aid in various classes. The authors intend to support this project through providing content as well as helping with administrative details.

New members of the Inspiring Education working group would be welcome to help the existing group with the implementation of the above projects.

Mission Statement: To make it easy for the Space Generation to make guest presentations on space related topics.

Proposed Outcomes

Teaching Star is a virtual project that aims to make space-education resources more accessible and appealing to educators. This idea arose out of the hypothesis that the frugal use of space-related topics in the classroom might not be due to the lack of available resources but rather the abundance. Space agencies, universities, companies and even independent persons have put a vast number of space education resources online for use free-of charge.

The authors of this paper are of the belief that due to the large number of resources available, it becomes difficult for educators to sift through them to choose the one most suitable. The Teaching Star project, therefore, aims to correct this situation by making a one-stop-shop website for space education material. This idea has been discussed with several educators including Ms. Philomena Bonis, a K-8 teacher from Canada and an International Space University Alumnus as well as with staff from the NASA education office, with a very positive response.
The Teaching Star project has been the main focus of the Inspiring Education Working Group over the past year. The authors felt that given the small size of the working group, it was best to tackle one project at a time. Not much progress has been made, therefore, on the other two projects beyond the conceptual stage but the authors plan to pursue them once the Teaching Star project has achieved some momentum. Finally, in addition to the creation of the website, this project also entails an advertising campaign to promote the website among educators. Both the website and its promotion are described in the following sub-sections.

Teaching Star Website

The Teaching Star website will be hosted at the following address: "www.teachingstar.org". The design of the website is intended to be quite simple with the main focus being a searchable database of space education resources. This search engine is modelled after the popular bookstore Amazon.com’s search features. Resources in the database are tagged with and are searchable by various attributes including age group, related subject area, media type (e.g. audiovisual, interactive, etc.), time and cost, and location. Each entry in the database also contains a brief description of the resource. At a later date, tools allowing users to rate and review database entries may be added.

A small team of web-developers and space enthusiasts are working on programming the database as well as finding and reviewing entries to be added to the database. Educational resources searchable through the Teaching Star website will range from lesson plans to online projects to listings of available speakers. Once the pilot site is completed, an ”Add a Resource” form will be made available to allow users to help expand the Teaching Star database. A ”Feedback” form will also be available and readers of this paper are encouraged to visit the website and provide the Inspiring Education team with their valuable comments and suggestions. The Inspiring Education Working Group hopes to make a working version of the Teaching Star website available by the end of 2005.

Advertising

The advertising side of the Teaching Star project is still in the conceptual stage awaiting the launch of the pilot website. Ideas for advertising were developed through discussions with Ms. Philomena Bonis and include publishing articles in teachers’ journals emphasizing the importance of space education and encouraging educators to use the Teaching Star database to find appropriate educational material for their classes. Short talks and information booths at teachers’ conferences and information sessions for young teachers at teachers’ colleges are also planned. In addition, some contacts have been established with school board officials in the principal author’s city of residence for advertising of the Teaching Star website to local educators. Finally, the Inspiring Education working group has recently attracted some new members who are developing new ideas such as the painting of a mural in a public place.

Travelling Exhibit

Another teaching resource idea conceived by the 2004 Inspiring Education Working Group is that of an exhibit on space topics travelling with IAC. The exhibit would consist of a self-contained module delivered to schools in the IAC city a few weeks prior to IAC. Space-educational materials in the form of informational brochures as well as instructions for projects would be included in this module. The module would be sealed and to gain access, students would answer some questions on space related topics. Each school would then have the opportunity to complete a space-related project and present the results at the IAC Exhibition.
The authors believe that giving students the chance to present their work to key persons in the space field would be a significant motivational force for the students and would drive them to design and present innovative ideas. As previously mentioned, this project has been on hold for the year due to time constraints and lack of human resources. Funding is also an issue for this project. However, the authors plan to revive this project in near future.

Space Textbook

The space education textbook concept was developed by the Inspiring Education Working Group for the purpose of introducing space topics to middle and high school students. The authors felt that while simple concepts such as the order of the planets or names of constellations are often taught to students, there are many space-related systems that affect everyday life – independent of large, controversial space exploration missions – that are not introduced to students; this includes topics such as science, technology, and engineering related to spacecraft and supporting systems. The proposed solution to this issue is a concise textbook containing information about space systems that is meant to augment an existing school curriculum. The space textbook is intended to be in the form of a handbook for teachers containing information about various space-related topics in a tabbed and indexed format with information categorized by the school subjects that it relates to e.g. mathematics, physics, biology, history, etc. This textbook would provide educators with a source of knowledge to improve their lessons and ultimately equip students with an advanced set of knowledge about space. As with the travelling exhibit project, the development of this concept has also been postponed pending the launch of the Teaching Star website.

Please note that some of the functions of the Teaching Star website can be provided by the NoanGea Portal.