Texas Space Grant Consortium: educational opportunities in Earth science and remote sensing

Science education has increasingly been an area of concern for educational leaders in the state of Texas. Many educators are looking for interesting ways to reach students by taking advantage of new technologies. The Texas Space Grant Consortium has begun developing a series of K-12 educational programs focused on using remote sensing for Earth science. These programs include a prototype remote sensing design competition (Sky View), an Internet based remote sensing program (STARS) and the TOPEX/Poseidon Adopt-a-buoy. Sky View, in its third year, is a unique and challenging program for secondary students to experience engineering design and to reap the benefits of remote sensing of the environment. The program is centered around a student team designing, building, and operating photography system to meet an objective. Students must present their results to a panel of judges at a competition held at the University of Texas at Austin. Previous projects include monitoring beach erosion, precision farming, monitoring of prairie dog towns, and drainage capabilities of retention ponds. STARS (Students and Teachers Accessing Remote Sensing) is a new Internet based program which is focused on using remote sensing for different Earth science applications. STARS will serve as an Internet resource for satellite data in conjunction with ground truth data and science curriculum. The primary focus is meteorology, but additional modules are planned in oceanography, land use, geology, and water resources. TOPEX/Poseidon Adopt-a-buoy is educational outreach program between University of Texas Center for Space Research (UTCSR) and the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR). Student teams will design shallow water platforms to be used for calibrating the altimeter measurements of TOPEX/Poseidon