CURIOSITY IN THE CLASSROOM: USING MARS EXPLORATION TO ENGAGE STUDENTS AND EXEMPLIFY NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS (NGSS) – NATURE OF SCIENCE

Landing a metric ton rover on Mars is one of those rare moments in human history that engages the masses in a very unique way. Leveraging the excitement and interest of current space exploration to engage our tech-savvy students in deep learning is a worthy goal. NASA’s Mars Exploration Program in partnership with Arizona State University’s Mars Education Program (ASU Mars Ed) has been providing Mars educator since 1997. In preparation for the landing of the Curiosity Rover in August 2012, ASU Mars Ed worked with NASA to provide an immersive experience for K-20 educators at JPL that included information and events culminating with Curiosity landing on the Red Planet. The goal was to connect the 100+ teachers in a participatory way to give them a first person experience with STEM experts. Curiosity Team scientists and engineers provided updates to help the teachers understand the nature of their disciplines. To help them integrate their first person experience into the classroom, teachers also participated in hands-on training facilitated by education professionals that included strong pedagogy, best practices based on research and standards-aligned science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) materials. These lessons create pathways for students to practice critical 21^st Century Skills and practice Next Generation Science Standards-embedded practices and content that connects to real-world endeavors that push our current understanding. A major goal of these professional development opportunities is to equip teachers with the necessary skills and confidence to enable students to have authentic research experience. The Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP) is an award-winning example of how students can access and utilize NASA data to experience science as a researcher. This transformational project allows students in grades 5-14 to form a testable research questions, gather the data using the NASA’s layered data sets in the JMARS tool (the same tool the Mars Science Community uses) and then present their findings to a Mars scientist for “peer review”. Over 40,000 students across the US and in 22 countries have participated in MSIP. On average over 35 classroom hours are spent on this project with student teams capable of making real discoveries during their research (e.g., new caves on Mars).