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Session 4 - The WWW and Astronomy Education.
Display session, Monday, January 13
Metropolitan Ballroom,
The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) was selected as one of two MIDEX programs approved by NASA for a year 2000 launch. Its mission is to acquire, for the first time, a variety of 3-D images of magnetospheric boundaries and plasma distributions in the near-Earth environment. It will investigate their changes due to interactions with the solar wind on time scales from minutes to months. In response to the significant opportunities inherent in the IMAGE data for enhancing K-12 education in Earth and space science, the MIDEX/IMAGE project has begun the development of a WWW-based site (URL=http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov) which includes a program called POETRY: Public Outreach, Education, Teaching and Reaching Youth. The POETRY site contains: descriptive material on the spacecraft and mission objectives; an illustrated glossary of common space science terms; a primer on the physical processes under investigation; an archive of classroom activities highlighting space science concepts; and an 'Ask Dr. Magneto' area where students and teachers can pose questions and receive answers. This paper will review the design of this site, and present a selection of representative classroom activities designed to supplement earth science and physical science curricula.
