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Launch off in the East Midlands: "Leicester, we have a problem!"
By Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab |
Every young boy born since the 1950s has wanted to go into space, and from the looks on the faces of the south London girls in Leicester in September, it's no longer a gender-specific dream.
"We've got less than a minute before we all die!" cries one of them as a siren sounds and a red light flashes above her head.
She has just discovered that the space station she is commanding is running short of oxygen - but the panic in her voice and eyes is tinged with enthusiasm. "What are the life support team doing?"
Meanwhile, the communications team at Mission Control are urgently trying to broadcast instructions for fixing the life support panel. It seems a circuit has broken on the space station and the life support officers don't know how to get it running again.
Desperately, engineers at mission control try to work out the problem while the astronauts fiddle with a control panel, the communications officers relay instructions, and the red light keeps flashing.
With approximately four seconds remaining of our air, the life support boys get our oxygen supply back up and running, and we can all breathe again.
Of course, the crisis has been pure simulation, part of the National Space Centre's educational programme, but the breathlessness is real enough: it comes from the excitement of watching young children deal with science and complex data as if their lives really depended on it.
The National Space Centre delivers two distinct educational experiences at its base in Leicester, besides its public visitor attractions.
Housed in its own building next door, the BT-sponsored Challenger Learning Centre features a mission control mock-up designed to look like NASA's Houston HQ, a shuttle launch simulator, and a space station control room to provide schoolchildren with the experience of going into space as astro-scientists.
Accommodating two school groups a day, a typical class of 30 children is divided into control and space station teams. Each team is further divided and students allocated specific roles, with some managing communication, others working with samples, controlling electrics, and others monitoring and controlling radiation.
During the course of a mission, they can expect to encounter a number of challenges requiring a high degree of teamwork, and collaboration between those in the mission control and space station simulators.
Joy Horton is education manager at the Space Centre, and says that the children who attend feel as though they are using science and information to prevent real catastrophes.
"We get kids coming out who really think they've saved their friends from certain death," she says.
Of course, the staff at the centre carefully control every mission, and provide help for groups who are struggling. For more able groups, the number of challenges and the urgency for fast responses can be increased instead.
The Challenger Learning Centre is unique in the UK and always has a long waiting list of eager schools wishing to participate, which is why Joy Horton and her colleagues have spent the summer running a pilot for a different kind of mission - one delivered direct to schools for Key Stage 3 students.
'E-missions' are a web-based variation on the Challenger missions, facilitated via video conference and instant chat consoles with mission controllers from Wheeling University in the USA, where the format was developed.
Supported by a Planet Science grant, the UK pilot study has delivered e-missions direct to a number of e-learning centres at secondary schools in the Midlands region.
The scenario for the pilot missions has been based around the volcanic eruption on Montserrat during the late 1990s, with students split into three teams: one to monitor volcanic data, another to track the approaching hurricane, and a third to coordinate the evacuation of the island.
During the mission, new satellite data is delivered to each team every few minutes, over the web or from the mission controller by video conference, alongside film of the event and pre-recorded news sequences. This real data captured at the time of the eruption, is used by the children to help the evacuation team clear the affected parts of the island.
Converting statistical data such as seismic readings and weather patterns into qualitative interpretations is by no means easy for even the most able of students; I did a mission with a group of teachers and we were left scratching our heads over seemingly indecipherable information a number of times. But these difficulties have not proved off-putting for many of the students involved.
Broadly, Joy Horton says, "The pilot aimed to give students a positive and sustained experience of a science activity in a very relevant-to-life context, and to have a positive impact on their attitudes towards science."
More specifically, it has involved children in teamwork, interdisciplinary working, data collection and analysis, and in communicating real, complex, scientific data sets by voice, text, and imagery. The urgency of the scenario has been proven to inspire children into working through their data quickly to make informed decisions. Horton says that one of the conclusions of the pilot study is that teachers should aim to become less controlling during e-missions, and to help facilitate children's ownership of their decision-making.
There are still a number of drawbacks, chief amongst them the difficulty of coordinating UK schools with the US-based mission control. For this reason, the Space Centre now wishes to deliver the missions to schools direct from Leicester, and is in the process of securing funds to do so. This will make it easier to run missions when schools want to do them, and will also significantly increase the number that can be offered. There are also plans to integrate the missions more into the UK science curriculum.
"There is a demand for ICT-rich science resources with relevant and exciting content," Horton says. But, she adds, "Work needs to be done to ensure that students and teachers make the link between the e-mission activities and the science curriculum."
With increasing web access, and the promise of broadband for all schools by 2007, the time is right for piloting such projects, and establishing the technology as a facilitator in learning. Despite the high-tech approach, the success of the e-missions pilot has ultimately depended on the enthusiasm and commitment of the participating students - an enthusiasm fostered by giving them specific parts to play in an urgent, albeit simulated, crisis.
Links
National Space Centre in Leicester: www.nssc.co.uk
e-Missions at Wheeling University: clc.cet.edu
Planet Science: www.planet-science.com/home.html
October 2003
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