Your Classroom Invited to Webcast w Astronauts on Intl Space Station

A Conversation Between Astronauts on International Space Station and REAL Grade 5-12 Student Researchers as Role Models for Your Students

In celebration of International Education Week 2012, you are invited to tune in via webcast to a live video-conference between astronauts aboard the International Space Station and grade 5-12 student researchers whose microgravity experiments are aboard Space Station right now.

These are student researchers of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP) who were asked to be real scientists, stepped to the plate, and demonstrate that real science – real human exploration – is exciting, challenging, and attainable by students even in upper elementary grades. These are student researchers that serve as remarkable role models for all our children who might aspire to be scientists and engineers – which is why we are inviting your classrooms to watch via webcast.

International Space Station Commander Williams has been operating all the student microgravity experiments since arrival at Station via the SpaceX Dragon vehicle on October 11, 2012. These 23 experiments were selected from 1,904 formally proposed by student research teams reflecting 7,420 students fully immersed in every facet of microgravity experiment design and proposal writing. The SSEP experiments are scheduled to return to Earth with Commander Williams on November 19, 2012, just four days after the webcast.

The conversation on November 15 between Station commander Williams (Suni), astronaut flight engineer Kevin Ford and SSEP students will address the human experience aboard the orbiting laboratory, the nature of a microgravity (‘weightless’) environment, and what it is like to be an astronaut.

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at its best. It is full immersion in every facet of authentic research, recognizing that we are all born curious, real science is just ‘organized curiosity’, and students are therefore fully equipped to be researchers right now.

This live video-conference with 9,500 students across 24 SSEP communities in the U.S. and Canada, and its simultaneous webcast by NASA TV and the Smithsonian for classrooms everywhere, is sponsored by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Education.

Be part of the Adventure – Invite Classrooms Across Your School and School District to Tune In. We have put together a web environment that supports your participation in the webcast, and which includes educational essays and hands-on activities to leverage the event.

Go to: http://ncesse.org/isswebcast

Also, in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, we have put together a video library of five 5-minute videos at the Museum’s YouTube site that we created for your students, and which celebrate the joys of learning, and the nature of human exploration. The backdrop is the Museum’s

Milestones of Flight gallery that contains the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, Lindbergh’s  Spirit of St. Louis, and John Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule.

Please pass on the playlist link to your teachers as you see fit:

Human Exploration, the Journey Continues

I hope you can join us on November 15 for something truly inspirational in STEM

education,

Best wishes,