Stars and STEM Stories

GLOBE students and teachers linked up with scientists and astronauts from Argentina and the United States at a video conference in June entitled "El Espacio, La Ciencia, y el Medio Ambiente" (Space, Science and the Environment). Video and audio equipment joined four sites: Buenos Aires, San Luis and Santa Fe in Argentina, (which also hosted GLOBE students and teachers), and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, USA. Officials from Argentina's space agency, Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) joined officials from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in presenting topics from manned activities in space to the latest satellite projects.  >>

Students participating in the Metacomet Ridge Interdistrict Academy are learning about diversity - diversity not only of soils, land cover, geology and the weather, but also of people. The academy is a multi-school, multi-district effort in the Hartford, Connecticut area that brings urban and suburban/rural students of diverse racial, ethnic and economic status together in teams to study the Metacomet Ridge.  >>

More is known and more is being learned about the waters of Bahrain, Jordan and Lebanon, thanks to the efforts of GLOBE students who are conducting the Middle East Hydrology Project. Through the project, developed by the participating countries, secondary school students are using GLOBE hydrology protocols to compare seawater quality in waters of the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, and to determine the effects of pollutants such as sewage and industrial waste on sea water.  >>

Earth and space scientists from the American Geophysical Union were so impressed with presentations by a group of GLOBE students at a recent meeting, the adult experts intend to invite such students back to future sessions. Nine GLOBE students from the Gallaudet Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, DC recently attended and presented at the AGU meeting. The students' involvement was part of AGU's effort to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the earth and space sciences by getting students interested before they even reach college.  >>

Soil scientists from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, are so impressed with GLOBE student data from Jefferson Middle School in Winston-Salem, NC, USA, that they've invited the students to help them with their General Purpose Atmosphere Plant Soil Simulator (GAPS).  >>

"Can the actions of man change a pixel's MUC code?" In the course of her land cover studies, fifth-grader Megan of Shenandoah Middle School in Iowa asked that question. Her quest for an answer led her to a national science award. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Stennis Space Center awarded Megan first place in the "Watching Earth Change" division of the NASA Student Involvement Program (NSIP), grades 5-8 division, for her project, "Loess Hills, Gentle Giants."  >>

Students at the Waynesboro (PA) Area High School once turned to local businesses and government offices for help in buying the instruments and other equipment they needed to participate in GLOBE. Now those same institutions benefit from daily weather information that Waynesboro students supply.  >>

In her address to an international audience at the United Nations early this year, 8-year-old Kahja Reid talked about the weather. She described how her third-grade class set up their GLOBE weather station (with a little help from a couple of fellows named Ken and Renzo from a local fence company) and how they do atmosphere protocols.  >>

Canada, a vast country covering nearly 10 million square kilometers and flanked by three oceans, has been spreading the word of GLOBE through years of local, provincial and territorial efforts.  >>

Gary Campbell's Marana High School students demonstrate that a desert is anything but deserted. In fact, some deserts are getting relatively crowded. That's in part what Campbell's GLOBE class juniors and seniors found out when they recently completed a 100-square mile land cover project in the southern Arizona desert.  >>