When I was teaching, one of my students' favorite days was Career Day.

It was a big deal. The entire eighth-grade class researched careers that interested them and then created their own resumes. On Career Day, they dressed "professionally" and had job interviews with volunteers from the community.

The event was interdisciplinary, but it was mostly English- and social studies-related. I taught science and math. If I were still teaching, I would use the DIY Podcast: Exploration Careers module to involve my science classes.

The new module features NASA experts who make human exploration possible. We have highlighted each of them in previous modules. But in this one, the experts talk more about what they do on their jobs and how they came to that position. They describe some of the most interesting things they have done while working at NASA. Everyone has a story.

We also have clips from NASA human resource specialists. These are the people who choose students for internships and hire new employees. One of the specialists, Karen Burton, gives interview tips and hints on how to prepare now for a future career. The other, Chris Randall, is a former aerospace engineer who came to NASA as an intern. Now he is the director of the Pathways Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The Pathways Program is the new internship program that has replaced the cooperative education program at NASA. Randall gives insight on the type of worker NASA will be looking for in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields.

DIY Podcast: Exploration Careers

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It's cool to watch the International Space Station fly overhead. The problem is you have to remember to check the sighting opportunities page to know when and if the station will be flying over your location.

Smartphones and tablet computers have apps that send alerts for station flyovers. But what if you don't have either?

Spot the Station to the rescue!

A new service that was announced on Nov. 2, the 12th anniversary of a human presence on the space station, alerts subscribers to station-sighting opportunities. Alerts are sent as an email or as a text message hours before the station flies over the subscriber’s neighborhood. Only flyovers that are high enough in the sky and last long enough to view are announced in the alert.

You and your students may sign up to have alerts sent to your phone or email. You may also want to create a multimedia project using one of our space-station-related DIY Podcast modules:

The last week of November and the first week of December will offer good sighting opportunities in many locations.

Spot the Station

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When we interviewed materials engineer Victoria (Torey) Long for the Failure Prevention module, she described the job that she and her teammates do in the failure analysis lab as NASA's version of detective work. In their interviews, Long and materials engineer Clara Wright both mentioned something about their childhoods
that probably made them natural-born failure analysts. Long's pastime was reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Wright liked to construct jigsaw puzzles.

If you have students who enjoy solving problems and mysteries, they probably will enjoy creating a multimedia project with the Failure Prevention module. They may also like reading the article   CSI: NASA. It is about the failure analysis lab at Kennedy Space Center.
The lab, nicknamed "Malfunction Junction," is the place where
mysteries are solved. The article intimates that the failure
analysis team is similar to TV's crime investigators. They investigate
mishaps with rocket hardware. If something goes wrong with a launch, this is the team to call.

The article also gives hints about the type of personalities that are better suited for this kind of work. Who knows? A future engineer   or failure analyst may be sitting in your classroom who never knew that this career choice is an option.

DIY Podcast: Failure Prevention

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