Space Camp for Teachers

In 2009, when I was teaching fourth grade math and science, I applied for, and got, a scholarship to attend Space Camp in Alabama. I had a great time (read my post in 2009 here) and used a lot of resources in my classroom. I even planned a potluck space night for parents (click here to read my post on a separate blog I kept up during my years as a classroom teacher) and got a grant for "build it yourself" telescopes. I love studying space and being able to go to Space Camp...for free...was a unbelievable PD opportunity. I made a video of all my pictures to share with folks who were in the program with me (click on the link above...or here if you want to see what it was like).

I'm writing a post about it because it is that time...time to apply for a scholarship! Each scholarship covers the following: tuition for the 5-day program at U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama; round trip airfare; meals and double occupancy accommodations; program materials; and...wait for it...a flight suit :)

To be considered to receive a scholarship you must be a current or practicing educator that is teaching science or math to students ages 10-14 years old and will continue to teach these subject areas through 2017.

Here are some things I remember....I was the lowest grade level represented...there were a lot of middle and high school teacher (so I felt a little overwhelmed on the intelligence level...but I was able to hang...barely :). The dorms we stayed in were COLD...I mean freezing. A teacher from Michigan (super skinny) had to put on her flight suit to keep warm during the night. I didn't even think of that. I shivered through my first night. I could have used a space blanket :). Those were the only two negatives everything else was fun and we were kept going from sunup to literally sundown (I remember the insane schedule!).

Anyway...if you are interested in applying the window open in November and here is the LINK if you want to apply (they try to pick teachers from every state...the year I applied I was one of two teachers in the state of SC to get the scholarship).

Comments

Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21). I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class. We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online). One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom. All the templates for this challenge Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was ke...

Random Idea - Website Domain Name

For the past two years I have purchased a yearly subscription to a stand alone website (School World) which I love. I did this because our district was using a very nonuser friendly website for its teachers and I was tired of not being able to do what I want with the website they had given me. I got the idea of a separate website from one of my son's teachers who had done the same thing years ago, she used a different teacher website then School World but it was the same principle. The yearly subscription rate for my own website was $35 and was extremely reasonable. I simply provided a link on my district website to my new site. The district did not have a problem with this. Several teachers were doing it. I am one of these "don't ask...don't tell" teachers so even if there was a problem I wasn't going to find out about it :) Last year the rest of the fourth grade team purchased subscriptions to the site as well. We also purchased our own domain names throug...

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Search This Blog