NASAexplores: Express Lessons & On-line Resources for K-12 Educators

by Dawn Gaddis, NASAexplores Marketing Specialist

Do you have trouble finding quality curriculum-support materials? Do you have budget constraints that make it difficult to buy what you need once you find it? Are you able to find materials that your students find interesting, yet you know provide educational information and support standards that you have to address? Would you be excited to learn that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provides free resources to meet your needs?

NASAexplores is an on-line NASA education program. NASAexplores provides express lessons and on-line resources to the K-12 community via the Internet. The program is managed by the education department at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA's Aerospace Technology and Space Flight enterprises sponsor NASAexplores.

NASAexplores strives to provide easy access to information on current research and developments in these two NASA enterprises in order to generate awareness of and to build students' interest in NASA, space, science, mathematics, geography, and technology. NASA's success will, in part, depend upon the quality of its future workforce, which will consist of many of today's students. It is critical to NASA's mission to help students understand the importance of continuously learning, researching, and developing methods and technologies to support America's space exploration effort.

NASAexplores is unique because its content is current and pertains to the latest research and development projects. Each week two articles are written about a current NASA Aerospace or Space Flight project. NASAexplores educators adapt the articles for three grade levels: K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Lesson plans and activities support concepts discussed in the articles. Numerous subject areas are addressed, and these materials support national educational standards in mathematics, science, geography, and technology.

By integrating NASAexplores materials into your curriculum, you can add a fun "space" spin to build interest in a variety of subjects. NASAexplores offers thousands of lessons, and you can use the search box or the advance search tool to find lessons to supplement your topic or subject. You can search by grade level, by materials available, by preparation time, by national standards, by subject, or by keywords. So, the next time you're covering time zones, visit NASAexplores and type in time zones in the search box. The database will supply all lessons related to that topic. NASAexplores even offers art and home economics lessons---kids love to make the bacteria cookies and enjoy them for a treat!

NASAexplores also offers users a huge archive of materials. We archive everything that is published, so users can always retrieve a favorite article or lesson by reviewing the list of previous articles, or by searching for a lesson using our search features previously mentioned.

Written by teachers for teachers, NASAexplores is just another way that NASA is trying to provide educators with quality, standards-based unique teaching tools to accomplish one of its strategic goals: to inspire the next generation of explorers...as only NASA can.