First "Short-course" soars !
February 09, 2004 - Teachers, some literally on cell phones and dial-up internet connections, became Signals of Spring certified this week, when they completed the first ever, new, online training course for Signals of Spring. "I felt like I was on the radio when it was my turn to talk about a satellite picture to everyone, and found I was learning a lot with my new peers that I connected with from coast to coast every time we had an online class."
The graphic sizes of the Earth images when they loaded in the training to see the animal locations were just right for the online training, which consists of 1-hour sessions, twice each week. The size of the slides that everyone looks at are just right, even for teachers who are on slower dial-up connections.
The training is done this way in order to maximize the participation with the teachers. Most of the teachers who participated in the first Short-course are from NASA Explorer Schools. U.S. Satellite told NASA that in order to save travel monies and do twice as much training this season, Signals of Spring was going to go "live" with a new way to work with professional educators. NSTA provided technicance assistance to the teachers, and issued evaluation surveys at the end of each session. On scales of 1-5, the teachers each ranked the components of the training a 4 or 5 for everything.
Signals of Spring hopes to expand the way teachers learn visual Earth science with life science. Teachers and students not only make connections between science content and Earth data, but they make connections with teachers from all across the country, at home and on the phone!
 Click here for press release.
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