Posts Tagged “technology”

NASA to fly high school experiments.

-Pulled from UPI.com

NASA is inviting U.S. high school students to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be flown into the stratosphere.

The space agency says it will send the experiments into the near space environment of the stratosphere — an altitude of 100,000 feet. The Balloonsat High Altitude Flight Competition will be launched on a NASA weather balloon May 25-27 in Cleveland.

“To participate, student teams in grades nine through 12 must submit a research or flight demonstration proposal to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland by Friday, Feb. 19,” the space agency said in a statement. “Teams of four or more may pursue a wide variety of topics in this competition, including science and weather observations, remote sensing and image processing. A panel of engineers and scientists at Glenn will evaluate and select four top-ranked proposals by Friday, March 5.”

The top four teams will be awarded travel expenses and up to $1,000 to develop their flight experiment or technology demonstration. Teams will participate in three flight days to release, track and recover their experiments.

NASA will host an informational webcast about the competition Wednesday from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST. A link to the webcast and additional information about Balloonsat High Altitude Flight is available at http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/balloonsat.

I pulled this article from ABC’s news section…thought it was interesting and would share.

“The Calif. Gov. Wants to Save Money by Dumping Printed Books for Online Texts; Is it Feasible?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a page from high school science books in an effort to shrink California’s $24 billion budget gap.

In fact, he wants to take the entire book — and do away with it.

By next fall, Governor Schwarzenegger intends to make free, open-source digital textbooks available for high school math and science classes throughout California, a move that he says will help reduce the more than $350 million the state spends annually on educational materials.

Some critics doubt the idea will result in any immediate cost savings — and question a plan that might require investment in technology and teacher training at a time when schools face deep budget cuts.

But if California embraces open-source materials, which are now increasingly used on college campuses, a nationwide debate over traditional textbooks is bound to follow.”

Just curious as to what different teachers feel about this and what states you are from.