Hubble Images Inspire Student Creativity at Odyssey School

The entry from the Odyssey School in Baltimore, Md. was selected as one of the best collages in an interdisciplinary Classroom Collage Activity sponsored by the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The collage activity is one of many worldwide events celebrating the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), which commemorates the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's momentous achievement of pointing a telescope at the sky for the first time. The goal of IYA is to spark worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science.

The Odyssey School students participated in the interdisciplinary collage activity, which fused visual art, science, and language arts in creating the collage of their favorite Hubble images. Besides making their collage, the students also participated in the Institute's "Hubble's Next Discovery: You Decide" event by selecting an object from a list of targets for the Hubble Space Telescope to observe and image. The winning target was a group of galaxies called Arp 274. The Odyssey School fourth-graders created a video and a pinwheel-shaped billboard full of Hubble snapshots. The school is a unique, co-educational independent school that meets the specialized needs of bright dyslexic children ages 5 years through 8th grade who have language-based learning differences.