Make NASA a part of your National Science Teachers Association, or NSTA, experience this year! The 2012 NSTA’s national conference is being held March 29 – April 1, 2012, in Indianapolis, Ind. Dozens of NASA presentations, workshops and short courses are scheduled during the conference. To find NASA sessions that fit into your schedule, visit http://bit.ly/nsta2012.
If you are not yet a participant in the NES project, you can obtain detailed information about NES by visiting the NASA exhibit booth or attending a NES presentation. The session, “Teach STEM? NASA Explorer Schools Can Help!”, takes place on Fri., March 30, from 11 a.m. – noon in the Cabinet Room of the Westin Indianapolis.
Attend these presentations and see how NES helps teachers by packaging everything needed to deliver an exciting NASA-related lesson to students!
Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools and Learning Environments and Research Network, or LE&RN, projects are hosting a 60-minute live professional development Web seminar for educators on March 29, 2012, at 8 p.m. EDT. Misconceptions about black holes will be addressed, as participants learn background information about the structure and behavior of one of the universe’s most mysterious and spectacular bodies. Learn how to derive the equations used in the Black Hole Math problem set for students to better understand the physics of black holes.
If you are attending the 2012 
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools and Learning Environments and Research Network, or LE&RN, projects are hosting a 60-minute live professional development Web seminar for educators on March 8, 2012, at 8 p.m. EST. Discover how an algebra activity called “Finding Habitable Planets” will help you teach students to use their skills to analyze NASA data. Students learn about the possibility of discovering planets in habitable zones of solar systems. 
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences, the NASA Explorer Schools project and the National Science Teachers Association are hosting a 90-minute professional development web seminar for educators on Jan. 23, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Learn to use data from NASA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES, and Polar Operational Environmental Satellites, or POES, in your meteorology lessons. This web seminar features “Monitoring the Global Environment,” one of eight modules within the Satellite Meteorology course. You will locate and download satellite data, then use these data to create graphs. 
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, NASA Explorer Schools and the LE&RN project are hosting a 60-minute Web seminar on Sept. 27, 2011, at 8 p.m. EDT. Investigate the characteristics of quadratic functions to solve real-world problems involving the parabolic flight path of NASA’s Weightless Wonder C-9 jet. Get an overview of a student investigation, solve related quadratic equations and evaluate and graph quadratic functions. A graphing calculator will be used to demonstrate concepts; however, you do not need a calculator for this professional development seminar.
As part of a series of electronic professional development experiences for educators, the NASA Explorer Schools project is hosting a 60-minute Web seminar, Smart Skies, on Sept. 22, 2011, at 8 p.m. EDT. Learn how to use an innovative air traffic control simulator to engage your students as they explore the mathematics involved in the role of an air traffic controller. In the three-plane problem featured in this lesson, the challenge is to change routes and speeds to line up the planes safely, with proper spacing, at a given route intersection.