PLANETS Lands in Las Vegas

Planetary Learning that Advances the Nexus of Engineering, Technology, and Science (PLANETS) is a NASA-funded collaboration between the Center for Science Teaching & Learning at Northern Arizona University, the Museum of Science Boston, the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center, and WestEd STEM to develop and support three out-of-school time engineering and planetary science units. The units focus on big ideas in planetary science that are interesting to learners in grades 3-8. These are remote sensing, water in extreme environments, and space hazards. The PLANETS team is disseminating PLANETS curriculum units and educator resources at conferences across the United States. Concurrent with conference presentations, PLANETS is hosting co-design working sessions with local out-of-school time educators with the intent to garner their feedback and recommendations for improving the program – particularly with indigenous learners, learners experiencing physical disabilities, and multilingual learners. In late March, 2022, PLANETS landed in Las Vegas, Nevada! Their professional development team worked with several enthusiastic and dedicated educators interested in contributing to the field of out-of-school time STEM education. Their co-design input will affect optimizations for the PLANETS curriculum materials and the educator resources on the PLANETS website. PLANETS also hosted a booth for out-of-school time educators at the National Afterschool Association annual convention in Las Vegas. (NASA Science Activation Award Number: NNX16AC53A.)

https://planets-stem.org/