4th graders chat with nasa our solar

4th Graders Chat with NASA--"Our Solar System"

On January 4, just the second day back from Winter Holidays, all USN

4th graders gathered in the Hassenfeld Library classroom to

participate in an "Our Solar System" interactive videoconference with

an expert at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. This

Center produces a robust series of offerings via IVC every year, and

their offerings are completely free of fees. We reserved our spot in

this interaction 'way back in October.

4th grade Teacher Lynn Noel and I connected with NASA's David Massa

well before the scheduled interaction to make sure the technical

requirements were met, and we left the unit on to maintain the

connection. When the fourth graders arrived, the connection had been

dropped and there ensued a flurry of redialing, rebooting, and

re-emailing before the connection was re-established.

NASA's Roger Storm proceeded to chat about the relative distances of

the planets from the sun, using a great metaphor of "blocks away from

school." In this analogy, the earth is 1 block from school, with the

other two "Inner Planets" in between. Pluto resides 40 blocks away!

Questions and answers were wonderful, and girls and boys alike asked

questions which were carefully and cleverly answered. View a 9 minute