RESEARCH LABORATORIES

Regional teachers LASSO the stars

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 7, 2001 Nearly two dozen teachers will blast off the new school year this fall using a curriculum they developed with the help of space scientists from the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. The 20 teachers came to Los Alamos from around the state of New Mexico and from El Paso, Texas, as part of the Los Alamos Space Science Outreach program. The program is designed to educate teachers about space science and provide them with educational materials, projects and curriculum to take back to the classroom.

"The philosophy of the program is to teach the teachers," said Phil Barker, program manager for NASA Space and Science Instrumentation programs at Los Alamos and chairman of LASSO. "We know our science, but are not trained and have little experience in how to tell a teacher to motivate a fourth grader to learn. We teach the teachers and get them fired up so they go back to school with enthusiasm. My experience is, if the teachers are excited -- it is contagious."

"The main [reason or] purpose of this outreach program is to get more kids interested in math and science, and in this case, space science," said Richard Alexander of Los Alamos' Science and Technology Base Programs Education Program Office. "We have received many letters from the teachers saying that this program is one of the best they have experienced in terms of educational content and student enthusiasm," said Barker.

In the summer workshop series, the teachers participate in 120 hours of intense learning activities. They learn about basic physics concepts, the sun, moon and planets, Earth's magnetosphere, NASA missions and instruments aboard the spacecraft, and data processing and analysis, according to Barker. "Very few people have knowledge about satellites, the solar wind, Earth's magnetosphere, so this gives the students pride that they are involved in learning about things that other kids don't know about. They get excited when presented stuff that is different - non-traditional," said Gary Gill, a teacher at Floyd High School, in Floyd, N.M.

Several scientists in Los Alamos' Space and Atmospheric Sciences and Space and Remote Sensing Sciences groups deliver lectures, conduct tours of laboratories and provide hands-on activities for the teachers. The teachers learn cutting-edge science and technology that they can bring back as opposed to textbook material. The scientists also help the teachers develop lesson plans and science projects for the upcoming school year and help make this information available on the Web.

Alexander said the teachers' tasks are to develop lesson plans and science/engineering projects and activities appropriate for the grade level they are teaching -- kindergarten to junior college -- and implement these during the following school year. These lesson plans and activities are put on the Web for teachers around the world to use and to see what Los Alamos is doing in the space sciences.

"We try to do innovative teaching styles and techniques. This year the students are going to a capitalist venture firm and asking for funding for a project," said Gill. "The kids are going to have to give a spiel on MEMS [micro-electro-mechanical systems] and how it will make for better space travel and satellites and try to get the firm to buy into this. The kids get really excited and into this kind of stuff -- especially when it involves money."

Los Alamos scientists also visit classrooms throughout the school year as part of the LASSO program and engage students and teachers in a variety of activities, such as robot building, and lectures and demonstrations on the sun and solar wind. The activities are directly tied to Los Alamos space science programs and help to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills and expand an understanding of space science with the goal of encouraging lifelong learning. Parents also are invited to these activities to participate with the students as a team in the hands-on segment and become informed about what their children are learning in school. This enhances the parent-child-education relationship, according to Barker.

LASSO's funding comes from the many projects NASA funds at Los Alamos. A portion of NASA funding granted to [Los Alamos] for science and research projects is [always] earmarked for education and outreach programs.

The program's first year, in 1998, had a budget of $10,000 and was able to support six teachers for 10 days. Over the past few years the number of NASA-sponsored programs at Los Alamos have increased and so LASSO funding also has increased.

"This year's funding allowed the LASSO program to select more candidates, [and] we tried to maximize the impact of the funding by bringing in more teachers," said Alexander. LASSO provides a stipend to the teachers to help cover their expenses during their three weeks in Los Alamos. They also get a follow-up stipend to implement the lessons and activities they develop while at Los Alamos, and for preparing and submitting an end-of-the-year report to the LASSO program.

LASSO money can be used to buy computers and provide Internet access for classrooms that lack the hardware. For more information on the LASSO program visit http://set.lanl.gov/programs/lasso/ lassomain.htm on-line.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration