NSF PR 96-43 - August 9, 1996
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Teachers Capture the Excitement of Martian Meteorite
with Science 'Toolkit'
When students walk into Juanita Ryan's classroom abuzz
about the recent discovery of possible fossilized
organisms in a Martian meteorite, she will have tools
to stimulate their curiosity, rather than stifle it;
a set of curriculum guides about the scientific search
for life in the universe, developed with support of
the National Science Foundation.
Ryan, who teaches 3rd grade at Toyon Elementary School
in San Jose, Calif., was one many educators nationwide
who helped to develop and field-test the series of
six guides for teachers of grades three through nine.
The news that possible microbes, perhaps billions
of years old, may have been found in a potato-sized
meteorite that crashed into Antarctica 13,000 years
ago is bound to make her students even more enthusiastic
about a subject they already love to discuss, Ryan
adds.
"My students will very definitely be interested in
this discovery," she says. "At this age, they are
always asking me the question: 'Do you believe those
television programs about finding aliens?' They're
going to eat it up, they really are."
The materials were developed at the SETI Institute,
a non-profit institution in Mountain View, Calif,
that manages research and education projects related
to the search for intelligence on other worlds. The
guides, with supporting videotapes and posters, were
developed with a $659,000 grant from the NSF's division
of elementary, secondary, and informal education and
support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
They are published commercially by Teacher Ideas Press,
of Englewood, Colo. The individual volumes in the
series, each with a foreword by noted planetary scientist
Carl Sagan, of Cornell University, deal with such
topics as The Evolution of a Planetary System; How
Might life Evolve On Other Worlds; and The Rise of
Intelligence and Culture.
Ryan says she expects to use one volume of the series,
called The Science Detectives, to channel
her students' interest in the question of life on
Mars. The module allows them to learn about the features
of the solar system, states of matter, and large-scale
measurements by 'helping' a fictional character to
track a mysterious extraterrestrial radio signal.
She adds that elementary school teachers, in particular,
who generally don't have much science background,
find the materials easy to use and effective. Edna
DeVore, who heads the education programs for the SETI
Institute, says that she will conduct several workshops
for teachers this fall in how to use the materials.
Kathleen O'Sullivan, a professor of science education
at San Francisco State University, was one of three
NSF principal investigators who created the series.
She notes that a module for 7th- and 8th-grade students,
called Life Here? There? Elsewhere? The Search
for Life On Venus and Mars, encourages them
to figure how to design experiments to determine whether
life might be present in Martian soil, replicating
on a very basic level the experiments that were carried
to Mars in 1976 aboard the Viking spacecraft.
Guillermo Trejo-Mejia, who helped develop the module
and who teaches it at Hillview Junior High School
in Pittsburg, Calif, uses the questions about Martian
life left unanswered by Viking to inspire his students.
"I say to them 'Some of you may be involved in future
Mars missions. You may be the future astronauts that
will answer these questions'." Trejo-Mejia already
is collecting clippings and videotapes of news about
the meteorite to spark discussion when school opens.
Based on the best scientific evidence, the guide indicates
that the most likely form that Martian life might
take would be one-celled organisms. "One thing that
we didn't do in the guide was to consider that we
would find traces of life here on earth in a meteorite,"
O'Sullivan concedes.
She also notes that the curriculum guides attempt
to teach that scientific fields are interrelated and
that scientific investigations often are multidisciplinary.
"Too often, the kids never see the connections between
the subjects of chemistry and biology, and physics,"
she says. "The search for extraterrestrial intelligence
is a natural way to make those connections and it's
obviously a fascinating topic for kids."
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