Mars Education Challenge Webinar on October 24
Register now by clicking this link – https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/698636150
Date: Monday, October 24, 2011
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
On Monday 24 October, 2011 at 12:00pm EDT, David Black of Walden School of Liberal Arts in Provo, Utah – one of the winners of the 2010-2011 Mars Education Challenge – will give a webinar about his entry and his passion for teaching science. His webinar is part of the Explore Mars monthly webinar series.
In March 2011, Explore Mars announced the winners of our first annual Mars Education Challenge (MEC). MEC was created to challenge science teachers around the United States to develop innovative curricula materials that can integrate Mars into every day science classes. The five winning science teachers devised some truly engaging and unique materials that we hope will be heavily utilized in classrooms around the United States and beyond.
David Black will discuss the curricula materials that he devised as part of MEC and how these materials can not only excite students about Mars exploration, but also about Earth science, astronomy, geology, multimedia, or computer technology classes. The curricula materials achieves this by using the following methods –
1. Create a Mars Rover Site Selection Committee and use maps and online resources (Google Earth) to select potential landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory.
2. Compare Mars terrains with Earth analogs to show the similarities and differences between geological processes on Earth and Mars.
3. Ask students to collect altitude data from a simulated Mars terrain, then convert the data into three models ranging from a color-coded topographic map to a physical model to a virtual 3D model on the computer.
All of the winning curricula materials from the 2010-2011 MEC can be found at –
http://www.exploremars.org/page/mars-education-challenge/winners-2011/
Over the next couple of months, Explore Mare plans to have the remaining MEC winners present their materials in special webinars to help guarantee that these materials are as widely distributed as possible. We hope that these education webinars will also build up excitement about the 2011-2012 Mars Education Challenge launched in September 2011. You can view our August webinar, featuring MEC runner-up winner, Andy Hilt, at this link – http://www.exploremars.org/explore-mars-webinar-series/
Explore Mars Video Spotlight:
For those interested in watching the MEC award ceremony that took place in San Francisco in March 2011, it is available at this link – http://www.youtube.com/exploremarsinc#p/u/40/ie3RvIGTSng
The video contains uplifting comments from Liza Coe (NASA Ames), Bill Nye “Science Guy” (The Planetary Society), Artemis Westenberg (Explore Mars), and passionate statements from MEC runner-up winners Andrew Hilt and David Black.
