STANYS

Launching an Elementary Project with MESSENGER

Introductions
- Gene Gordon; Anne-Marie Gordon
The MESSENGER program meets Elementary Education
- NASA has made a concerted effort to reach out to educators, students, and the general public with information about NASA programs through social media, NASA online resources, and the selection of teachers to serve as NASA MESSENGER Fellows.
Classroom Activities / Meeting Standards
- Connecting via the web: NASA and the MESSENGER Fellows have a very active presence on various social media platforms, providing great opportunities for students to connect.
  - Examples: PBWiki, Twitter, Ustream, VoiceThread
- Cross-curricular opportunity: NYS MST Standards, ELA (reading & writing), Information Literacy / Research Skills, EdTech / NETS standards.
- Examples of Activities:
  - Finding Science Information: Students brainstormed sources of information on a topic, and the results were compiled using Wordle, a site that creates a graphic from text. The biggest words in the picture were the most popular responses.
  - Messages from Mercury Students used print and online resources to research the solar system. They imagined what tourists would see in various places in the solar system, then wrote letters home to their families. The letters were actually mailed home. A version of this project that integrates more technology is Podcasts from Pluto. Using their research, the children wrote and practiced podcast scripts, which they performed and recorded using Audacity, a free download.
  - E-mails from Earth: Students complete a web-based activity which teaches them about using websites for information while they gather facts about the solar system. A concluding task asks the children to send their teacher-librarian an e-mail telling something they discovered that day.