Space weather...use NASA images to stimulate digital kids' interests.

NASA's website is the biggest locker of unexplored treasures I can imagine.  Just happened to find this unbelieveable image of how the Sun's atmostphere impacts the Earth...showing the magnetic field of the Earth flowing out towards the Sun.  We'd just talked about it class two days ago.

I was able to bring this picture into my class and show them space weather.  That totally had them jazzed up to understand way more than I am prepared to explain...way more than I understand.  But I felt like I was working with that raw enthusiasm that only the younger grade level teachers see.  My middle schoolers were begging me to tell them more and they were hungry for knowledge.  All because of this picture and lots of wondering!!!!

I would just love to find a class that helped me have a more systematic way of finding everything.  NASA's site feels a lot like the American Memories collection at the Library of Congress.  enough material to fill a lifetime of teaching moments...but so little able to find it and process it and use it.  I sort of feel sick when I really delve into the website.  Then I turn it around because I typically find something that I don't think I can help but share with my students.  I know they grow weary of...."You won't believe what I found while surfing around at NASA last night".  And I know they think I need to get a life if what I do at night is NASA surf...but this is really one of the best uses of tax dollars I know of.  and I thankful for those moments of discovery.

Comments

[Steve Dickie]

If you're interested in space stuff you should chekc out Celestia. It's a free opensource program that simulates the Solar System in 3D.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

For some great eduactional units using Celestia check out:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/educational.php

If I taught a unit on the Solar System I'd spend quite a bit of time with Celestia.