LiveFrom the Hubble Space Telescope

Teacher's Guide

Special Thanks

Hugh Anderson and Kathee Terry, Project ATHENA/SAIC w Greg Andorfer, National Productions, WQED, Pittsburgh w Charles Benton, Films, Inc./PMI, Chicago w Joe Benton and Debbie Rivera, NASA TV w Ben Benzio and students, Connellsville Jr. High West, PA w Paula Blizzard, Winsome Mundy and Laurissa Richards, RSPAC, WV w Joe Bredekamp, NASA Office of Space Science w Bill Burnette, NASA-Industry Education Initiative & Tri-State Education Initiative w Susan Chase, OLPA, NSF w Hall Davidson and Kathryn Hulce, KOCE w Kimberly Gonzalez, NASA Classroom of the Future w Fritz Hasler and Alan Nelson, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center w David Havt, International TeleEducation, Inc. w david Howe, Step Star w Theresa Hudkins, PAO, NASA HQ w Garth Hull and Tom Clausen, Education Office, NASA Ames Research Center w William Likens and Paul Hunter, HPCC-IITA, NASA w Wes Huntress, Associate Administrator for Space Science, NASA w George Miles and Mel Ming, WQED, Pittsburgh w William Millman, USIA Worldnet w Eiko Moriyama, LA USD w Cheri Morrow w Robert Myers, NASA COTF w Joan Piper and Elizabeth Knight, Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA w Alan Ladwig, Advisor to the Administrator, NASA w Mark Leon, IITA, NASA Ames Research Center w Frank Owens, Malcom Phelps, Pam Mountjoy, Rick Smith, NASA Education w Martin Ratcliffe, Head, Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh, and Carolyn Dietrich, Carol Scott, Dena Tarshis, Dan Malerbo, Jim Hughes, Carnegie Science Center w Pat Rieff, Rice University w Margaret Riel, Interlearn, Encinitas, CA w Pam Rockwell, K-12 Learning Services Newsletter w Jan Ruff, Preston Burch, Pat Kennedy, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center w Kitty Salinas, TEAMS, Los Angeles w Gerhard Salinger and Rod Custer, NSF w Fred Shair, Rich Alvidrez, Gil Yanow, David Seidel, Jim Wilson, Education Office, NASA JPL w Dennis Small, OSPI, Washington State Department of Education w Jeff Rosendahl and Mike Kaplan, Astrophysics Division, NASA HQ w Ed Weiler, HST Program Scientist, NASA w Flint Wild, NASA SpaceLink w Bernie Withrow, Seton Hill College Talent Search

From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances and strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born. Today we have reached far out into space. Our immediate neighborhood we know rather intimately. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.

The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be suppressed.

Edwin P. Hubble

The worst thing that has happened to science education is that the great fun has gone out of it... (instead, science should be) ...high adventure ...the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings, the chance to catch close views of things never seen before, the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works.

Lewis Thomas, researcher and essayist

...the telescope has released the human imagination as no other implement has ever done... the development of the telescope marks, indeed, a new phase in human thought, a new vision of life...

H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"

We hope to find something we hadn't expected.

Edwin P. Hubble

This Teacher's Guide was compiled, edited and/or written by
Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Erna Akuginow

With Contributions by
Joseph D. Exline, Jan Wee, pat Haddon, Marc Siegel and

the Passport to Knowledge development team
Astronomical Activities written by
William A. Gutsch, Jr.
Teacher Reviewers
Scott Coletti, Pat Haddon, Patty Miller,
Linda Morris, April Whitt
and Kim Zeidler (STScI)
Design/Cover Design and Layout
Carol Richman
Journal and/or Interview Excerpts courtesy
Marc Buie, Heidi Hammel, Anne Kinney,
Tony Roman and Alex Storrs
Poems Courtesy
6th-8th grade students from Summit Middle School, NJ

Additional production assistance for live uplinks sites furnished by
Buhl Planetarium, Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh w WQED, Pittsburgh w Seton Hall College Talent Search w Connellsville Jr high west w Project ATHENA w Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction w Museum of Flight, Boeing Field, Seattle w Step Star/ESD 101 w Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA w Los Angeles Unified School District w TEAMS Distance Learning, LA County Office of Education w Bavarian Television w HST European Coordinating Facility, European Space Agency w Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA
For CuSeeMe and videoconferencing assistance,
Houston Museum of Natural Science
For Internet participation in Brazil,
Compaq Computer, FutureKids, USIA Worldnet
©1996 Geoff Haines-Stiles Productions, Inc. All materials contained herein may be copied for educational, non-commercial use.

Setting Out on an Electronic Field Trip

photo of HST in outer space

Turn your TV and computer into a "passport to knowledge" and reach out to Neptune and Pluto via NASA's Hubble Space Telescope

Passport to Knowledge is an ongoing series of "electronic field trips to scientific frontiers." It's designed as an innovative learning experience that integrates live interactive telecasts, pre-taped video backgrounders, responsive computer communications and hands-on in- class activities to allow you and your students to travel, virtually, to places that would otherwise be almost impossible to visit. Before now, no K-12 students have ever had the opportunity to suggest what the Hubble Space Telescope should observe, and then been able to participate as the actual orbits are planned and executed. This will be the first time, ever, that live cameras have been allowed into the Mission Operations Room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, bringing students as close as it's possible to get to Space Telescope unless you're an astronaut on a servicing mission. Because of its educational mission, Passport to Knowledge is being allowed to boldly go where not even the commercial broadcast networks and NASA Associate Administrators were permitted! It's a unique privilege, and we hope you and your students take full advantage of it. You earned this access in large part by your commitment of time and energy to the "Great Planet Debate" which demonstrated to NASA how interested elementary, middle and high school students are in the planets, people and processes to be seen in Live from the Hubble Space Telescope, (LHST).

Project Components:

"The Three T's"

Live from the Hubble Space Telescope uses the complementary contributions of the three T's-Television, Telecommunications and you, the Teacher-to help students become active participants in some of the most challenging and exciting scientific research currently underway.

Television

The two upcoming live programs are key components, but they will contribute most to your students' learning experience if Activities and lessons precede and follow them, as many teachers chose to do as part of Live from Antarctica (LFA) and Live from the Stratosphere (LFS). You may find the 30 minute introductory program, "The Great Planet Debate" (first aired November 9, 1995, but still available on tape from Passport to Knowledge and being re-broadcast by some PBS stations-please check local listings!) is still of interest, even though we now know the "winners" of the debate. The program provides background on HST, the target planets, and the overall timetable for the project.

"Making YOUR Observations" (March 14, 1996) will provide a "first look" at our collective observations of Neptune and Pluto, and we hope for considerable excitement as we see just what we've captured!

"Announcing YOUR Results" (April 23, 1996) will reveal the first substantive findings from the Passport observations: the 5 week period between the programs is relatively quick for analysis and review, but we hope for some significant announcements from our Planet Advocates and those students who'll be working alongside them, virtually, with the new images.

Telecommunications

No project could ever provide sufficient video uplink sites to connect all students who might wish to interact with researchers at the remote field sites, whether in Antarctica, the stratosphere or Baltimore (home of the Space Telescope Science Institute.) But on-line networks allow us to extend the interactivity symbolized by the live, 2-way video and audio into every school and class across the nation, and indeed, around the globe. We plan for participation from Brazil, Europe and elsewhere, by students watching over USIA's Worldnet or other links.

Our on-line components allow students to send e-mail to experts, some of whom have been seen on camera, and to receive responses to their specific, individual questions. Field Journals, or research diaries, provide personal behind-the-scenes insights into the people, places and processes seen on camera. Even more than in previous projects, LHST will support collaboration between teachers and students, and feature the results of such on-line collaboration during the live telecasts. (see Going On-line, p. 42 for more details) This Guide provides basic information-and we hope some encouragement and motivation-to go on-line if you've not done so before. Once on-line, you'll find many more specific suggestions about how to use e-mail and the project's Web pages.

The Teacher

This Guide and the accompanying "mini-kit" of additional publications and discovery tools are designed for you, the Teacher. They provide practical, hands-on Activities for middle school students, often with suggestions about adapting them to lower or higher grades. You'll find icons indicating which Activities can connect across the curriculum, linking science with math, social studies, language arts, and other disciplines. We've also provided a Matrix or grid showing how the various Activities, grouped by program, embody the suggestions of the AAAS's Project 2061 (Benchmarks for Science Literacy) and the California Science Framework. We are very interested in how the entire project works for you, and welcome your feedback by mail or e-mail.

Format of the Teacher's Guide

Each activity in LHST is designed to:

Several activities lend themselves to a form of embedded assessment: for example, Activity 4A, "Writing Across the Solar System" and 4B, "Lights... Camera... The Universe" require an understanding of the new science discussed in the programs, but also creativity, authoring, presentation and publishing skills. Such extensions of the project will also provide you with concrete evidence about what your students "got" from their participation.

What Teachers Said About "The Great Planet Debate"

It is really rewarding for me as a teacher to see student interest so high in something scientific. The Planet Advocates have almost reached the "star" quality that my students usually reserve for athletes and movie stars. They've been thrilled to read the messages that have come in on the computer from all over the United States and the world. They don't even realize that they are learning.

Ruth Wahl science teacher, Allegany-Limestone Central School, NY

While watching my students evolve from a class into a "think tank" I have been able to share in their excitement, enthusiasm and their learning process. They came to me and shared their new discoveries and information in a manner which filled me with pride in them. This is a great group, and remember these are High School soph., jr. and sr. It is not often they can be so outwardly enthusiastic. We are looking forward to the final decision, and whatever the outcome, we are already planning the "Observing Party!"

Rob Theriaque, Aerospace Studies, Nashua High School, NH

ALL of us sitting in on this discuss-hst "debate" panel are...

Marilyn Wall, 4th grade teacher, Wayland Elementary, Bridgewater, VA

NASA's Interest in Promoting Public Uses of the Internet Support for Passport to Knowledge: Live from the Hubble Space Telescope comes, in part, from the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications Program (IITA) of NASA's Office of High Performance Computing and Communications. Our integrated multimedia project coincided with NASA's commitment to demonstrate and promote the increased use of the nation's vast but hitherto under-utilized treasury of Earth and Space Science Data. We hope you and your students will mine the wealth of information and marvel at the instructive and often beautiful images that await you, just an on-line connection away.

How to Use this Guide

Tips to help you implement Live from the Hubble Space Telescope

This Teacher's Guide and mini-kit closely follows the format developed for Live from Antarctica and Live from the Stratosphere. Your feedback rated those materials high in quality, but we hope you also find we've added some "New and Improved" features. You should assume every Activity is great for Science classes, but we've added Computer and Art icons to those already indicating interdisciplinary opportunities for Social Studies, Language Arts and Math. There's a two-page overview of how Passport to Knowledge and the Live from... specials can help you, the Teacher, implement some of the most important recommendations which have been published by groups such as the National Academy of Sciences and AAAS's Project 2061. Written by Joe Exline (former head of Virginia's NSF-funded State Systemic Initiative, current Executive Secretary of the Council of State Science Supervisors and a Consultant to Passport to Knowledge), these suggestions may help you both in the classroom and in the front office, when an Administrator asks you just exactly what you think this "electronic field trip" does for education and your mandatory course of instruction! To help maximize the value of the videos, and to help you create a receptive "set" in your students, we'll be posting narrative scripts for the taped segments on-line, one week in advance of the live programs.

The Activities

As in previous projects, the Activities suggested here relate closely to the real-world research you and your students will see during the live videos and read about on-line. They were developed to help make otherwise abstract aspects of, for example, image processing come to life. "The Universe in Living Color" (Activity 3A, p. 30) provides a hands-on experience using the color filters co-packaged with this Guide to show how computers transform black and white images into stunning Hubble pictures, samples of which you'll also find enclosed. We've even researched which brands of colored markers give you the best results! (see Activity 3A, Materials)

PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE ICONS

Art   Computers   Social Studies  Language Arts   Math   Technical Education

Passport to Knowledge

Guiding principles

Throughout this Guide and in all the various media we employ, we've tried to make LHST a "turnkey" project, so that you'll find sufficient substance, suggestions and support to allow you to orchestrate a successful experience for your students, no matter your level of technology or prior training, whether you're an astronomy buff or relatively unfamiliar with the latest data.

Co-packaged Materials

Co-packaged with the LHST Teacher's Guide(paper version) come several existing publications, and materials designed to support hands-on activities:<> NASA's Space Based Astronomy provides background relevant to the Hubble field trips (specifically on the electromagnetic spectrum), an excellent Glossary, and a listing of other NASA resources and how to order them.

A selection of Hubble's "Greatest Hits," in and beyond our solar system: these color lithographs, supplied by the Space Telescope Science Institute, speak for themselves as stunning pictures, but when you want to go beyond the beautiful imagery you'll find explanatory captions on their reverse.

STScI also cooperated with Passport to Knowledge to permit us to print a special LHST edition of the Eagle Nebula poster, one of the most beautiful and thought-provoking space images ever.

Hubble Space Telescope: New and Improved from STScI's Starcatcher series provides background on HST and its operations, on the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on Jupiter, and other useful information.

Students can literally get their hands-on the Hubble with the copy master pages for a card or paper model of Space Telescope, duplicated from a NASA original. Since we're committed to making each Passport to Knowledge project as easy to implement as possible, we've also included samples of several items needed for various Activities: heat-sensitive paper and UV beads for Activity 2A, capturing InfraRed and UltraViolet radiation in memorable ways; color filters for 3A (you can find out how to order larger quantities of these materials in the Resources section, p. 44); and 4 pages of Earth and interplanetary weather images to be copied for Activity 3B.

Sufficient structure for success.

Flexibility enough for local adaptation

Passport to Knowledge recognizes that each school and teacher is unique. We've tried to provide enough information to make LHST successful for you and your students, whether you only watch the videos and use this printed Guide, or go on-line with simple e-mail, or browse far and wide with full Internet access. There's no "one right way" to use the project. We encourage you to pick and choose those aspects which work best for you and your students, adding parts of your regular curriculum which can be enlivened by this electronic field trip to see HST, Pluto and Neptune close up. (Please, share your experiences, successes and frustrations with your peers and colleagues all across the nation and the planet, via discuss-hst, our on-line teacher co-laboratory.)

On-line: A Unique Opportunity

Though we encourage flexibility, we'd not serve you well if we did not emphasize that the on-line resources referred to throughout this Guide and referenced in the videos are extremely important. Passport to Knowledge is perhaps best utilized as a thoroughly integrated multimedia experience in which the Video, Print and On-line components are of equal value, delivering different but complementary experiences. The on-line materials permit a degree of interactivity with the Hubble team impossible through any other medium. The on-line collaborations, such as the Star Census (continued from LFS to permit more national and international participation) and "Weather or Not?"-new for LHST and specifically seen during Program 3-provide a model for communication with peers across space and time which is an introduction to the world of work your students will inhabit.