Tag: space

  • Space Club Dreams

    Shelly Fryer and I have a “slow hunch” that we should start a SPACE CLUB at school. Shelly and I are both “space geeks” and love sharing “all things space” with our students. My class “Wonder Links” frequently include videos and websites about space and space exploration. This past week, we watched and discussed both…

  • 1000 Starships to Mars Every 2 Years

    Tonight Elon Musk and Chris Anderson have stretched my mind in some unexpected ways. Elon hopes we’ll see (and is working toward) a future within 10-20 years where SpaceX is launching 1000 Starships to Mars every two years, so we can establish a self-sustaining city of a million humans who will be able to carry…

  • Sharing My Enthusiasm for Space Exploration

    Last week when Shelly and I were attending the NASA Space Exploration Educators Conference at Space Center Houston, our students and colleagues were out of school with 3 snow days in a row! Today we were all back in class, and I took about 10 minutes in each of my classes to share a little…

  • The Orbital Perspective: Inspired by Chris Hadfield, Ed Robertson, the Wexford Gleeks and Rod Murray

    Thanks to a recommendation from my Canadian friend and fellow educator Rod Murray (@mrmuzzdog), this morning I started my day with an inspiring, co-created song by Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield), Ed Robertson (@edrobertson,) and the Wexford Gleeks (@wpa_to) recorded together when Commander Hadfield was orbiting our planet as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station in…

  • Interactive Google Earth Updates and Map Tools: Solar System Exploration and Nuclear War

    In this week’s EdTech Situation Room podcast (tomorrow/Wednesday evening at 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain) I’m going to share several new space related features in Google Earth as well as some new Google Maps mashups (at least new to me) that can be used in the classroom to interactively explore and discuss current…

  • David Jakes on Learning Spaces (April 2016)

    David Jakes (@djakes) is not only one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, he’s also an amazingly knowledgeable and articulate educator with fantastic insights into the design and redesign of learning spaces. He recently spent two years working with The Third Teacher (@thethirdteacher) helping organizations worldwide design and redesign learning spaces, and he’s continuing work in…

  • Mission to Mars STEM Camp for Teachers: June 6-9, 2016

    You’re invited to join Amy Loeffelholz (@AmyLoeffelholz), Shelly Fryer (@sfryer) and I this summer for our third STEMseeds PD Camp for teachers. This year we’re offering a 4 day, hands-on STEM experience, and calling the workshop “Mission to Mars STEM Camp for Teachers.” Our audience is all K-12 classroom teachers as well as STEM teachers. The…

  • Furniture Quest for a Collaborative Classroom

    I’m in the Dallas, Texas, area this weekend (in Allen, specifically) serving as a chauffeur for my in-laws, who are visiting family. I’m also, however, on a furniture quest for my wife, as she seeks to create more spaces in her elementary classroom for collaboration and engaged learning. Yesterday I spent a couple hours at…

  • Amazing Animated Space Films: Wanderers and New Horizons

    Videos about space have been some of my favorite things to share with 4th and 5th grade STEM students the past two years. Yesterday I added several new space video links to my STEM curriculum “Curiosity Links” page, which my friend Bill Casebeer shared with me this weekend. The first is a short film (just under 4 minutes…

  • Great Videos To Show Students About NASA and Orion

    Today was a very exciting day at school for several reasons. One was the successful launch and recovery of the unmanned spacecraft “Orion” by NASA, which some of my STEM students watched and experienced in real-time. The launch was at 6:05 Oklahoma time (7:05 Florida time) and the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean happened 4.5 hours…