- Daylight Saving Time begins March 9, 2008
For schools in most of the US, don't forget that Daylight Saving Time begins early again this year. Please request separate overpass schedules before and after March 9, 2008.
- Website maintenance scheduled for March 10-14, 2008
The computer behind the S'COOL website will be undergoing scheduled maintenance during the week of March 10-14. Our plans are for S'COOL to be down for a minimal amount of time on Tuesday March 11th. S'COOL should only be down for one day if all goes well, with possible short outages the remainder of the week. If you make observations while we are down, please save them to enter the next day.
- Overpass schedule adjusted for Leap Year
The overpass calculator code was updated to allow for February 29th (it's leap year). The problem was fixed on February 6th. Anyone who generated an overpass schedule prior to February 6 for schedules going past February 28 will need to request that schedule again to get the correct times for February 29th onward. The overpass times after Feb. 29th are wrong on any schedule obtained prior to that fix.
- Satellite Correspondences
You may have noticed that you have not received very many emails recently about satellite data corresponding to your observations. The satellite data processing has been on hold while some issues were addressed. (These particular issues have to do with how the algorithm handles missing data files and other mechanical parts of the analysis; not with the cloud analysis itself.) Processing will start again soon. The FLASHFlux team will begin by reprocessing the month of December 2007, as a way to check that the changes they made are working correctly. If you receive an email for a December correspondence, it is likely a duplicate of one you received before, and you can ignore it. Once that testing is complete, you should start to see the correspondence emails coming on a regular basis again.
- Featured lesson for this month
Check out this lesson on measuring, recording, and graphing amount of rainfall: Comparing Amount of Rainfall in Different Geographical Areas, which is lesson #12 on the S'COOL Lessons list. It was written for third grade, but can be adapted to other grade levels, and is a simple way to encourage your students to collect and study authentic data. The lesson was submitted by Verna Jones, an elementary teacher from Isle of Wight County Schools, Virginia.
- Website feature of the month
For more information on using S'COOL data, visit the featured website section for this month, S'COOL: Using the Database. On this page is a link to the Data Analysis Tutorial, which recently passed review by the NASA Earth Science Education product review panel. Take a look! Does this tutorial work at your grade level? If not, send us some feedback on how we can better meet your needs.
- First USA school adds S'COOL to its website
We've just added the first and only US school to our list of S'COOL on School Websites. Is your school missing from this list? Check out the one for Columbiana, OH. The teacher there will shortly be posting information about the unit of study her students are doing.
- MY NASA DATA Summer Workshop 2008
Initial planning for the MY NASA DATA Summer Workshop 2008, for teachers of grades 6-12, is underway! For those of you not familiar with the MY NASA DATA project, it is the "sister" educational outreach program of S'COOL, sponsored by NASA's Science Directorate.
The workshop will be held at NASA LaRC in Hampton, VA, June 22-27. The workshop is designed to assist teachers with the study and implementation of Earth science data sets for classroom use.
Applications must be postmarked by April 9. To read the full announcement and application, please visit the MY NASA DATA website and click on the link, Workshop Information and Application. If you have questions, please contact Susan Moore.
- GLOBE at Night 2008 - Can You See the Stars?
Join the 2008 GLOBE at Night Campaign from 25 February - 8 March. 2008 marks a monumental shift in human history when more than half the people on Earth are expected to be living in cities. Because of the ambient light of urban landscapes, many city dwellers have never seen a sky full of stars.
During the 2007 event there were 8,491 observations reported from 60 GLOBE countries, almost doubling the observations from 2006. Thank you for your nighttime sky observations on light pollution from around the world!
Information on how to participate may be found at GLOBE at Night website.
- Contest Opportunity - 2008 Thacher Award
The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) is now accepting entries for the 2008 Thacher Scholars Award, to be given to secondary school students demonstrating the best use of geospatial tools or data to study our home planet.
Eligible tools and data include satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, geographic information systems (GIS), and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Entries can be submitted by individuals or teams, either by hard copy or by emailed PDF.
Entries must be received by April 4, 2008.
For more information on the Thacher Scholars Award, including contest rules, judging rubrics, questions to help guide student projects, and a list of related resources, please visit the IGES website.
CONTACT
Dan Stillman
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
(703) 312-7138 (Phone)
(703) 312-8657 (FAX)
Email: dan_stillman@strategies.org
E-note Index
January 2008
March 2008