Materials Developers
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) has an essential role in NASA’s education mission “to inspire the next generation of explorers.” The discoveries and new knowledge from our missions and research programs consistently engage people’s imaginations, inform educators, and excite children about science and exploration. SMD encourages the development of education and public outreach programs and products that utilize and excite our audiences about SMD research, missions, and discoveries. Here you will find information that will allow you to:
- Propose an E/PO project to SMD
- Partner with an SMD E/PO community member
- Find resources for your programs
NASA Wavelength is an intuitive and searchable database of SMD educational products and activities. Find resources for your programs!
You can also search for education resources created by all areas of NASA
List of NASA K-12 programs and products
List of NASA Higher Education Programs and Products
If you are an educational materials developer who is doing – or interested in – education and public outreach, and would like to be part of SMD’s E/PO Community, please contact the SMD E/PO Forum that most closely aligns with your interests; contacts are listed at the top of the PEOPLE tab.
The Dawn Mission E/PO is planning to commemorate the arrival of the spacecraft at dwarf planet Ceres with a festival called i C Ceres. As we did with Vesta Fiesta heralding the mission’s arrival at the giant asteroid in 2011, i C Ceres will provide a forum and resources for events to be held across the country and around the world. Vesta Fiesta recorded over 100 festivals at museums, observatories, and backyards; from the flagship event at the Pasadena Convention Center that highighted…
DownloadIn response to the expressed needs of scientists, we have created two, one-page guides to assist scientists interested in E/PO. The first is "The Quick Introduction to Education and Public Outreach," which offers suggestions to first-timers about how they might start reaching out. The second is the "Making the Most of Your E/PO Time – Increasing Your Efficiency and Impact," which suggests leveraging existing materials and programs, and provides other ideas for scientists to make the…
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Designed for informal audiences, and developed in collaboration with SMD-funded astrophysics E/PO teams, the Universe Discovery Guides highlight astrophysics education and public outreach resources from across more than 30 NASA astrophysics missions and programs. The 12 free guides, one per month, are designed to be short and modular, so that users can easily select content based upon their needs. Each of the guides addresses a common astrophysics topic and contains the following…
The Forum Leads delivered an invited plenary presentation entitled "Science and Science Education Go Hand-in-Hand: The Impact of the NASA Science Mission Directorate Education and Public Outreach Program" at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) in San Jose, CA (Ensuring STEM Literacy: A National Conference on STEM Education and Public Outreach). Attached are the slides used in the presentation and a pre-print version of the conference proceedings…
Download AttachmentsNASA missions, educational projects around the country, and cosmologists themselves have produced a wide range of materials that astronomy instructors (and their students) can use to learn about the latest developments in modern cosmology. Too often, however, these materials go unused because instructors are not familiar with them or don’t have them accessible at the time that they need them. This annotated guide is designed to highlight useful materials on the web and in print. It was…
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The discovery and characterization of exoplanets is one of the most exciting and fast-changing areas in modern astronomical research. As a result, Astronomy 101 instructors have had trouble keeping up with the flow of new techniques, instruments and discoveries. To help, NASA missions, educational projects around the country, and scientists themselves have produced a wide range of materials that astronomy instructors (and their students) can use to learn about the latest developments.…
The Year of the Solar System provides a framework of thematically structured existing products and activities. Each topic highlights different aspects of our Solar System – its formation, volcanism, gravity, ice, life elsewhere? – weaving together activities, resources, news, and ideas that scientists, faculty, teachers, clubs, and organizations can use to engage audiences in exploring the big questions of Planetary Science.
Opportunities to get involved with education and public…
This is a quick start guide and a “sampler” of the variety of Astrophysics education and public outreach (E/PO) resources created by the NASA Science Mission Directorate funded E/PO teams.
The Sampler provides not only examples of the NASA Astrophysics E/PO resources, but also ways that the resource could be used, and how/where to obtain the resource.
The information is also online at:
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=26458