Where will you be on August 21st, 2017?

Photo Credit: Mark Bender

This month marks the pre-anniversary of the amazing total solar eclipse that will cross the continental U.S. from coast-to-coast next summer on August 21, 2017.

What is Multiverse doing about it?

We are very proud to announce our sponsorship by Google’s Making & Science Initiative! They are a new division within Google that is partnering with Makers Faire, Exploratorium, and other great science educators to make things happen.

You can check Multiverse (us!) out on their new website.

Support “Full Spectrum,” a film project to create a new social image of who scientists are and who can be scientists. 

Support this great documentary film project by our very own Bryan Mendez! There are only 6 days left in Seed & Spark’s Untold Story Crowdfunding Rally and we need as many followers and pledges to come on board as possible in these final days! We need $9k to be pledged in order to get ANY money at all to kick start this project, and we need at least 500 followers to make it to the next round of competition – only the top 10 films with the highest followers advance to the next round with possibility of matching funds from Project Greenlight.

A video about Martian atmosphere loss has won a people's choice competition held by Science magazine. The video, "Martian Atmosphere Loss Explained by NASA,"  was part of the prestigious magazine's Data Stories competition. These videos could be in the fields of planetary science, oceanography, meteorology, neuroscience, criminology, and many others. The video was enthusiastically supported by our MAVEN Educator Ambassadors (MEAs)! The MEAs are a group of master teachers of grades 6-12, members of a community of practice we've built around the science of the MAVEN mission.

[This is one of a series of blog posts about our six-year involvement leading the NASA Heliophysics Science Education and Public Outreach Forum.]

Since January 2012, a group of science educators, NASA mission scientists and education specialists have met monthly online to discuss current heliophysics research and share educational resources and best practices to incorporate into their classrooms.

Originally, this group began as a group of twelve middle and high-school science educators recruited to participate as Lead Teachers to establish a Heliophysics Community of Practice (HCoP). These teachers were previous participants in existing NASA SMD E/PO Heliophysics teacher professional development programs, such as the Heliophysics Educator Ambassadors (HEA), the Geomagnetic Event Observation Network by Students (GEONS), THEMIS professional development programs and Van Allen Probes workshops.

Several participants had kept in touch with each other informally, continuing the supportive relationships they had formed during their educator programs. Using multi-mission funding and efforts, NASA E/PO educator coordinators were able to establish a more formal opportunity for these educators to meaningfully engage with others and support them in continuing to teach heliophysics in their existing classrooms.