We've Got the Technology -- Now What Do We Do with It?
Part 3 - Teaching Astronomy with the Internetby Michael J. Passow
Earth Sciences CorrespondentNow that the Internet is becoming widely available in schools, teachers are looking for some good places to direct students. Here are some good sites for educational activities in astronomy.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) has been our federal government's primary astronomy-oriented organization for more than four decades now. Its main home page is www.nasa.gov Here you can find news articles about NASA activities, educational resources, shuttle launches, research and business opportunities, and many other potentially useful ideas. One place to start might be NASA's Earth science home page: www.earth.nasa.gov. Also useful for students are the links from this page to the home pages of fifteen NASA research centers and test facilities, some of which will be described in more detail below.
There are also links from the NASA home page to other government space-related agencies, including the weather and environmental satellite programs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; EROS (Landsat) program of the Department of the Interior; and available information from the Department of Defense. In addition, NASA provides links to many foreign space agency web pages, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Space Agency, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations.
For information about one of NASA's most interesting current projects, check out the "Lunar Prospector" home page: http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov You can find lots of information about our first mission to the Moon in twenty-five years. There are general descriptions of the project, data, archives, science, and education sites within these pages. You can learn about mythology and early concepts about the Moon in the "History" section.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) web site is www.gsfc.nasa.gov Here are sources for news stories, public programs, education, descriptions of facilities, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and more. Of special interest for student projects are the photograph and movie gallery, where images of Earth and other objects in space can be obtained. GSFC also provides useful information reachable through several sub-sites, including Earth Observing System education home page http://eospso.gsfc.nasa/gov, Oceanography from the Space Shuttle photo album http://daac.gsfc.gov, and Remote Sensing Tutorial: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) web site is
Here students can find much information about other planets in our solar system, the Moon, and various space-based studies of Earth. There are several JPL web pages specifically designed for educators, including http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov Educational applications can also be found on many of JPL's project sites. For instance, students can find project ideas using satellite measurements of marine winds at http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov. One of the most extensive studies of our planet's air-sea interactions involves the TOPEX/Poseidon project, a joint American/French program that began gathering data almost eight years ago. Many interesting student project ideas can be based on information found in the TOPEX/Poseidon home page at http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov
More ideas can be found in pages created by universities. The University of Texas Center for Space Research uses TOPEX/Poseidon data for global sea level analyses, which can be found at http://www.csr.utexas.edu/sst/. Lesson plans developed at the University of Rhode Island for student research involving satellite oceanography can be found at http://dcz.gso.uri.edu/amy/avhrr.html
These web sites and many others can provide you and your students with starting points to an enhanced science education program. Science education should no longer be textbook-oriented. The best way to meet the goals set forth through the national and state standards is to create knowledge through skill-building, much of which should utilize the potential of computer-based technology.
The big challenge now for educators is to help students develop appropriate questions, use the sources available through the Internet and other resources, and present their ideas through spreadsheets, graphs, PowerPoint presentations, and other computer-based tools. If we do this correctly and students can do this, they can simultaneously learn what they need to pass multiple-choice standardized tests. But they will also be able to do much more, and these may be the skills needed for success in the 21st century workplace.
(Cautionary Note: Internet addresses (URLs) listed were correct as of the date of writing, but may change subsequently. It is necessary to be ready at times to explore a bit to find new addresses, or even accept that a web page has been canceled.)
(Editor's Note: The first two articles in this series were published in the Winter 1996 and Winter 1998 issues of this Newsletter, respectively.)
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