Afterschool Students Enjoy NASA Summer Camp
Tue Jul 26 2011
Students in a West Virginia afterschool program enjoyed four days of NASA Summer of Innovation activities during a summer camp June 13-16 at the Center for Educational Technologies
The NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future at the center hosted the camp for nine middle school students who have actively participated in the Ohio County Schools Anchor afterschool program. Six teachers also participated. The students were invited to the camp based on their Anchor program attendance and commitment to school academic programs.
Each camp day focused on a science topic (extreme weather, robotics, volcanoes and climate change, and the Moon) and featured NASA Summer of Innovation activities. The final session involved student explorations of the formation of Earth's Moon through the Selene videogame, which began as a NASA-funded project. Students also participated in a virtual geological exploration of the Moon through MoonWorld, a Classroom of the Future project to study learning in virtual worlds.
Campers closed the week with a family science fun night in which students launched bottle rockets with the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit, dined with their family on campus, and practiced setting up and viewing the evening sky through a variety of telescopes.
The camp was funded by the Classroom of the Future, the Anchor program, and the West Virginia After School Foundation Explorations program.
