HR: 0800h
AN: ED41B-0257    [Abstracts]
TI: Scientists and Education: The Process of Developing Formal Educational Outreach for the NASA CINDI Instrument Package.
AU: * Bober, K M
EM: kendra0519@yahoo.com
AF: Science and Mathematics Education Program - University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 836088 FO 22 , Richardson, TX 75083-0688 United States
AU: Urquhart, M L
EM: urquhart@utdallas.edu
AF: Science and Mathematics Education Program - University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 836088 FO 22 , Richardson, TX 75083-0688 United States
AU: Urquhart, M L
EM: urquhart@utdallas.edu
AF: Center for Space Sciences - University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 836088 FO 22 , Richardson, TX 75083-0688 United States
AU: Hairston, M R
AF: Center for Space Sciences - University of Texas at Dallas, PO Box 836088 FO 22 , Richardson, TX 75083-0688 United States
AB: NASA requires one to two percent of the overall budget (not including launch costs) to be allocated to Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) for missions and instruments. Science teams have enthusiasm for their investigations but generally lack the preparation and knowledge necessary to convey this enthusiasm into a form that is useful in formal education applications. Additionally, there are a multitude of challenges to the creation and delivery of quality educational outreach products and programs. For example, necessity for field testing of curricula, state and national standards, high stakes testing, limited classroom time and increasing demands on the nation's classroom teachers all must be taken into consideration in order that the products and programs will make a difference in the classroom. We are using the NASA-sponsored instrument program CINDI (Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation), which is scheduled to fly on the Air Force's C/NOFS spacecraft, to study the development and implementation of a formal education program required by NASA. The educational outreach for CINDI (an ionospheric explorer) is especially challenging because of the high level and difficult to visualize science concepts of the investigation. Our study includes analysis of the process required by scientists and their educator partners to think about how to make the science behind the mission interesting, tangible and relevant to the K-14 classroom.
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 0830 Teacher training
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting