Rosemary Shaw
Millennium Middle School
Orlando, Fl. 

Rosemary_Shaw@scps.k12.fl.us

Excerpt from  How to Use the Internet in Your Classroom

Blast Off! Quest for Space

Quest for Space is one teacher's experience in constructing meaningful web activities from a cool site. Having found a cardboard shuttle a colleague had discarded, she brainstormed ways to incorporate the theme of space in her math class. An old textbook located in the back corner of the classroom had a wonderful project on the Hubble Telescope, which inspired an online search for "Hubble." This brought her to the NASA site, where she found numerous lessons related to mathematics, science, and computer technology. After further exploration and preparation, she developed her own virtual field trip full of enriching activities for the students.

"Having access to the computer lab with my students for one day, I prepared a document with hyperlinks to guide students through the site. We did a puzzle, researched the shuttle and the Chandra telescope, and completed a scavenger-hunt tour of the site that moved students from one place to another in a defined way while collecting information. To top it all off, I arranged for my students to chat, real time, with NASA engineers. I used this site to supplement the textbook to teach my students conversions, metrics, and basic computer use."

Rosemary Shaw 

By the end of the year, this teacher had signed up her class for a project-to develop a community on Mars- sponsored by the NASA site. Colleagues in the art department helped students create mission badges; the journalism teacher assisted with designing a newspaper for the new community; and the band teacher led a discussion on how sound would be different on Mars. Students brainstormed ways to fly to Mars, based on their Internet research. The school year ended with the promise that the class name would go up on the next Rover to Mars. What a way to end the year!

Check out Rosemary's lesson plan, Shuffle off to Space and Millennium ISS Virtual Field Trip, in How to Use the Internet in Your Classroom.