Astronomy Workshops for K-12 Public Schools
This Spring quarter, we are thrilled to offer a new and unique workshop to elementary and middle schools. GRIDFIRE is a newly developed fun, interactive, and educational tool that allows students to play with real physics and satellite data to understand the spread of Californian wildfires. Students get to change temperature, humidity and wind direction of a true Californian Wildfire and try to stop it from spreading, while understanding the underlying components that make wildfires worse or easier to fight. Test a sample of the simulation here.
REQUIREMENTS
Schools that request this workshop should comply with the following requirements:
- Have an active internet connection in the classroom
- Have a computer or tablet available for every student taking the workshop
- Have a computer projector or big screen TV in the classroom
- Allow 45 to 60 minutes for the presentation and hands-on workshop
- Understand that the program is in the testing stages and may require further polish
- Allow for 3 sessions to happen during the same day, with close to 100 students served in their school
- Schedules should happen between 9 AM and 1 PM
- Allow students to complete an anonymous survey
- Grades: 5th through 8th
AVAILABLE DATES (from 9 AM to 12 PM)
- Thursday, May 4th, 2017
- Thursday, May 18th
- Thursday, June 1st
- Registration closes on March 27th.
- Selected schools will be contacted the first week of April.
Request the workshop here.
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
GRIDFIRE complies with the following grades’ NGSS:
4th GRADE
- 4-PS3-3 ENERGY
- 4-PS3-4 ENERGY
- 4-ESS2-1 EARTH’S SYSTEMS
- 4-ESS2-2 EARTH’S SYSTEMS
- 4-ESS3-2 EARTH AND HUMAN ACTIVITY
5th GRADE
- 5-PS1-3 MATTER AND ITS INTERACTIONS
- 5-PS1-4 MATTER AND ITS INTERACTIONS
MS 1, 2 & 3
- MS-PS1-4 MATTER AND ITS INTERACTIONS
- MS-PS1-6 MATTER AND ITS INTERACTIONS
- MS-ESS2-5 EARTH’S SYSTEMS
- MS-PS3-4 ENERGY
- MS-ESS3-2 EARTH AND HUMAN ACTIVITY
- MS-ESS3-5 EARTH AND HUMAN ACTIVITY
GRIDFIRE
The computer simulation is a MUREP NASA MIRO FIELDS Program project developed by Jeanette Cobian, Trevor Arp and Mario De Leo-Winkler, through funding provided by Prof. Bahram Mobasher.