Civil Air Patrol Educators
Provided a requested day long Lunar and Meteorite Disk Certification Educator Workshop (in coordination with the Goddard Space Flight Center Education Resource Center Manager) at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Thirteen Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Aerospace Engineer Educators toured the SAM Laboratory (Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite) and participated in the Lunar and Meteorite professional development workshop.
In addition to piloting, each officer is officially tasked to provide education outreach and leadership programs within a specific region of the United States. Many of the officers not only train cadets in leadership programs, but also work with Informal Education (museums) as well as K-12 schools to provide engaging activities in order to help participants understand the STEM behind Aerospace Engineering.
The collaboration between Goddard and the Civil Air Patrol is becoming a sustainable effort with the Director of the Aerospace Education who is thrilled to bring CAP officers to NASA GSFC for professional development training. Workshop activities provided educators with geological content about moon rock and meteorites as well as helped to create building blocks for understanding the relationship among science, engineering, technology, and teamwork, necessary for discovery and innovation.
This train the trainer workshop demonstrated how planetary features are discovered by the use of remote-sensing techniques such as telescope observations, fly by missions, orbiters, landers, and rovers. Teachers also engaged in many hands-on standards based Moon activities while learning about accretion, differentiation, cratering and volcanism processes.
Educators were excited about using the triangulation technique activities (a concept commonly used in flight missions) found within the Exploring Meteorite Mystery Educator Guide, to predict where meteorites might be found. With the Lunar and Meteorite Disk Certification, educators can borrow the Lunar or Meteorite disk and utilize these educational materials, for use within their assigned region of the East Coast.