SATELLITES

SATELLITES is a professional development program aimed at training and supporting K-12 science teachers interested in integrating geospatial science and technology in their curricula. SATELLITES students and teachers have gone to the White House Science Fair the past two years.

SATELLITES (Students and Teachers Exploring Local Landscapes to Interpret the Earth from Space) is a cooperative effort between teachers, students, and scientists aimed at enhancing hands-on science and technology education in a wide range of topic areas including Earth and Space Science, Geography, Environmental Science, Biology, and Physics. Started in 1998 with a NASA New Investigator grant awarded to Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, SATELLITES is a collaborative effort by science and education faculty from the OhioView Remote Sensing Consortium, and has been the outreach program for OhioView for the past seven years.

Since 1998 over 250 teachers from across Ohio have been trained. The program now also includes teachers from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Alaska, West Virginia, and Maryland.  Funding and related support for SATELLITES comes from NASA, the USGS, the Ohio Board of Regents, the Ohio Space Grant Consortium, and AmericaView. The goal of SATELLITES is to offer teachers excellent professional development that includes exciting and engaging lessons and materials tied to state and national educational standards. By engaging students in real science, SATELLITES aims to increase student interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers.  Each year OhioView and various AmericaView partners conduct summer institutes in Earth science and technology content, project-based learning, and student inquiry. During each institute, teachers learn about remote sensing and model classroom lessons and activities, and develop an inquiry-based research project. In the fall of each year, SATELLITES supports a field campaign in association with GLOBE in which students develop and present inquiry-based research projects.