NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Submitted by: Sandra Myers

Dr. Ann M. Martin is the first NASA Office of Education NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow at NASA. She is featured on the NPP website, "Meet the Fellows" for an extended period of time. Appointed to the NPP in the spring of 2011, Dr. Martin is assigned to NASA Langley's Science Directorate where Dr. Margaret Pippin and Dr. Lin Chambers, respectively, are her advisor and co-advisor. Her research centers on a resource that would help the climate education community visualize and connect national efforts in climate education.

From the drawing board to the Internet, NPP Fellow Ann Martin, helps create new climate education database Credit: NASA

Individuals and groups interested in science education now have a new resource at their fingertips -- a database full of lesson plans, tools and products about the complex, yet much-discussed topic of climate change.

The database is called the Tri-Agency Climate Education Catalog, or TrACE. It is the result of collaboration between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Together, the three agencies have funded a number of projects that are aimed at increasing climate literacy and preparing the future workforce for jobs in climate-related areas. “Using TrACE, researchers discover what their colleagues are working on and connect with each other in innovative ways,” Martin explained.

"The collaboration is really focused on learning how to effectively teach climate change, which is not just complex but also multidisciplinary. It deals with Earth science, economics, government, math, agriculture and so many other subject areas," said Lin Chambers, the project scientist for NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) at NASA Langley.

The results of these projects are now arranged online for the public to view and access. The concept of the catalog started as a way for principal investigators on each of these climate literacy projects to see what others were creating. Although the primary goal of the catalog was for internal use, Chambers and the other creators of TrACE decided to make it available to educators.

Read Dr. Ann Martin’s full feature online: http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/about-fellows/ann-martin.htm

Read TrACE full feature online: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/nasa-partners-release-database.html

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