DRYDEN FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER - NEWS ROOM: NEWS RELEASES: EDUCATORS TO STUDY EARTH, NASA DRYDEN'S PATHFINDER



EDUCATORS TO STUDY EARTH, NASA DRYDEN'S PATHFINDER <h3>Oct. 30, 
1997</h3> <h4>Release: 97-39</h4> Printer Friendly Version 
Hawaii teachers will take on two fascinating subjects next month 
during special NASA educator workshops on Kauai, Hawaii. The 
education events are sponsored by the NASA Dryden Flight Research 
Center, Edwards, Calif. Their mission? To learn more about planet 
Earth and to visit Dryden's Pathfinder aircraft.

The Pathfinder solar-electric flying wing, part of NASA's 
Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program, 
currently is at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) 
at Barking Sands, for a series of flight-research missions.

Dryden educators will put teachers in the classroom as students. The 
teachers then will embark on a "Mission to Planet Earth" as they 
learn new ways to incorporate hands-on and minds-on Earth science 
activities into their classrooms.

Dryden is encouraging teachers from all the islands to bring their 
classes to the open house Nov. 7 for Pathfinder. According to NASA 
Dryden's Educator Resource Center Manager Michelle Rademacher 
teachers from other islands who attended the NASA workshops in May 
are expected to participate and approximately 1,000 schoolchildren 
are expected for the open house.

Thirty teachers are expected to take part in each Mission to Planet 
Earth Remote Sensing workshop. The workshops, geared toward educators 
who teach grades kindergarten through eight, is the second in a 
series of workshops that have taken place in Hawaii this year. The 
first workshops were held in May.

Dryden's Aerospace Education Specialist Michelle Davis and Rademacher 
will conduct the workshops. "We're working with teachers on how to 
use NASA educational material in relation to Pathfinder," Davis said. 
Activities include designing a research aircraft mission for the 
classroom and building a model aircraft.

Other topics include atmospheric impacts of volcanoes, cloud-radiation 
effects, the greenhouse effect, vegetation and hydrology, ocean 
processes and sea-level change.

"Basically, what we are doing in the workshops is hands-on activities 
such as identifying satellite parts. We do activities such as making 
satellites, and then we talk about how Earth-sensing equipment on 
satellites are similar to those on the Pathfinder aircraft," 
Rademacher said. "We also conduct activities on what Pathfinder is 
observing on Earth."

The one-day workshops are geared toward math, science and 
general-studies teachers.

Teachers also will learn what is available to them through NASA's 
Educator Resource Centers and will receive an introduction to on-line 
educational resources and curriculum materials, video, posters and CD 
ROMS as well.

The Mission to Planet Earth program captures NASA's spirit of 
exploration and focuses it back on the Earth. NASA and its 
interagency and international partners are striving to discover 
patterns in climate that will allow scientists to predict and respond 
to environmental events -- like floods and severe winters -- well in 
advance of their occurrence. Nations, regions and individuals then 
can use that knowledge to prepare for those events, likely saving 
countless lives and resources.

Rademacher said the teachers" enthusiasm after the May workshops has 
been enormously rewarding. "We do evaluations at the end of the 
workshops, and we have received nothing but excellent responses," 
Rademacher said. "The teachers think it's great that NASA is out 
there so prominently in the world of education."

The November educator workshop schedule is as follows: ... Bishop 
Museum, Nov. 1 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., 1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI, 
(808) 848-4102 ... Eastside Kapa'a Elementary School Library, Nov. 3 
and 4 from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. both days, 4886 Kawaihau Road, Kapa'a, 
HI, (808) 821-6838. ... Westside 'Ele'ele School computer lab, Nov. 5 
and 6 from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. both days, 4750 Uliuli St., 'Ele'ele, 
HI, (808) 335-5214

Dryden also will conduct a workshop on Nov. 8 at PMRF for Justin Mew, 
the Hawaii State Science Education Specialist, and other state 
educators. The group also will take a tour of Pathfinder.



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