Great Lesson about What is Gravity

Diane Hammond twittered about her posting and this lesson is amazing at how well it teaches gravity. Check it out.

Ask an Astrophysicist!

Technorati Tags: gravity, zerog, nasa, iss

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Ms. Golden finally got to experience Zero-G

Thurs, Sept. 13 was a very exciting day for me!

I finally got to experience Zero-gravity. I went on a 14 parabola journey with Northrop Grumman's Flights of Discovery. While on the plane I got to experiment with "eating" M&M's in Zero-G. In addition to eating the M&M's, we got to "drink" "balls" of water that were "floating" in the aircraft.

I can't even begin to explain what Zero-gravity is like. I definately want to do it again!!

Flight Team chats with Dr. Smith

Yesterday two second grade students and two members of the Zero-g flight team went to the Career Center to film a segment of 15 Minutes with Dr. Smith. They talked about their experience doing the experiments and participating in videoconferences. Tune in on June 15th to see the students, Mrs. Donovan and Mrs. Frick on television!

Spinning Toys - Topic of a National Webinar

The last EdTechConnect Webinar (web and teleconference) is scheduled for today at 5:00 PM. Discovery Education asked their Star Discovery Educators from around the country to submit projects they had worked on with teachers and students. Fred Delventha, a Zero G team member and a Star Discovery Educator, was one of 4 presenters selected.

Here is the blurb from the announcement.

http://www.denblogs.com/discovery_educator_networ/2007/05/last_edtechconn.html

Fred Delventhal will be presenting Spinning Toys: Balance and Motion in Microgravity. Fred was part of a team of teachers that guided second graders through the scientific process to find out the effect of gravity on spinning toys. They conducted the experiments on NASA's Reduced Gravity Jet - The Weightless Wonder. Fred used this project to introduce new technologies to the teachers involved such as blogging, Flickr, and Google Docs.

Students Present at Virtual Symposium

On May 1st, four Second Grade students presented our microgravity experiment at the NASA Langley Research Center Virtual Student Symposium. They got to see a presentation by Barbara Morgan, the first educator astronaut, on her upcoming mission STS-118. The Barrett students presented the experiment results to middle school students in Harned, Kentucky. After the presentation, students answered questions from NES educators. Our students did a wonderful job! The symposium came to an early end when the connection failed. Thanks to Mrs. Qunizio's, Mrs. Nagle's and Mrs. Lambert's classes who watched the event with us.

Project is still going strong

Although our flight was in Feb. and the students analyzed the data in March, the project is not over yet. We have three major items that still need to be finished.

1. Our final report to NASA.
2. The students will need to present the project on May 1st.
3. A final all school assembly presentation of our experiences.
   

Yesterday we had a work day funded by the Arlington Public Schools Science office. It provided funding for substitutes for Mrs. Donovan, Ms. Golden and Mrs. Frick. The four of us worked on the first two items on the todo and got pretty far.

Now just to get some ideas for a fun, interesting, end-of-the-project presentation that the whole school will enjoy.

Any ideas, let us know in the comments.

Sharing with a wider audience

One of the underlying goals that NASA wanted us to include is how can we share our experiences with a much larger audience than just our classes or the people in our school.

Last week I was able to share with a class at Ashlawn Elementary. Mrs. Frye's fourth grades were loaded with questions about the whole experience from planning to what exactly happened on the flight. They were challenged to make their own predictions for the second graders experiments.