A Place for All Ages
The Challenger Learning Center has long been one of the most recognizable and familiar places in the Center for Educational Technologies facility. With the addition of the Micronauts lab in our ground floor, there is even more reason for youngsters as well as adults to schedule a mission.
The Micronauts program is aimed at students in grades K-2, a demographic that hasn't been served with a dedicated facility by the Challenger Learning Center in the past. The new facility is a cornucopia of visually stunning and inviting stations for young people to dive hands on into science exploration. Among the stations is a large, orange model rocket in which groups of kids can enter and experience the sound and vibration of a real-life liftoff. At another station students wipe a formula on their hands, then examine them under black light to show the germs on their hands. The kids also get to use a microscope. Other exhibits include Nutrition Station, where students create breakfast, lunch, and dinner for astronauts; Color Your Senses, where students sniff bottles with colored formula and identify scents; and Rock Tumbler, where students use a robot to help understand gravity. The facility is designed to mimic the kinds of work astronauts would do on the International Space Station.
You don't have to be a youngster to enjoy the Challenger Learning Center, though. The center's on-site and distance learning e-Missions™ are aimed at students in middle school, but many of the missions work just as well for older students. And adult missions for corporate events continue to be popular team-building events.
In 2010 more than 1,000 video connections were made at the center. Between the e-Missions and on-site missions in Wheeling, Challenger reached more than 40,000 students last year.