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National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) Educators presented at the Mission Mars: A STEM Problem Based Learning Teacher Professional Development Institute on June 22, 2021, at the Children’s Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth, Va. Dr. Sharon Bowers (Senior STEM Educator), Joan Harper-Neely (STEM Specialist), and Betsy McAllister (Hampton City Schools Educator-in-Residence at NIA) from NIA’s Center for Integrative STEM Education (CISE) collaborated with Daniel Borick, Director of the Beazley Planetarium at the Children’s Museum, to plan an engaging professional development for Portsmouth Public School educators. Bowers, Harper-Neely, and McAllister engaged teachers as they prepared for, participated in, and extended learning as a part of the Challenger Center’s virtual mission Destination Mars. The six participating educators were divided into three pre-mission preparation teams: Rover Team, Radiation Team, and Solar Energy Team, where they each gained necessary mission information through watching the NASA eClips videos Launchpad “Curiosity Goes to Mars” (Rover Team), Real World “Space Weather” (Radiation Team), and Real World “STS-119 Brings More Power to the Space Station” (Solar Energy Team). Teachers experienced the Destination Mars mission with Challenger Learning Center of Maine’s Flight Director Sarah Raymond from the perspective of a student, who guided the teachers as they determined whether a human outpost would be better placed on Mars’ moons, Phobos or Deimos. Participants also completed Virtual Mission: Destination Mars Spotlite Challenge and the creation of a Spotlite video. Teachers set up two demonstrations targeted at confronting the misconceptions that “Mars is red because it is hot” and “All planets have one moon.”
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Last Updated
Jun 22, 2021
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NASA Science Editorial Team
