Broker Program Completes Successful Term
Wed Jun 11 2008
After a successful five-year run, the Mid-Atlantic Region Space Science Broker (MARSSB) program has completed its mission with the submission of a final report to the NASA Science mission directorate.
The report covered the five years of a cooperative agreement with NASA that started in 2002 and subsequent bridge funding that ended this year. According to Dr. Laurie Ruberg, associate director of the Center for Educational Technologies®, the center's involvement in MARSSB led to collaborations with science and educator partners that the center will call upon within the purvue of its current EdTech Collaborative project and research regarding educational applications of virtual and synthetic worlds.
The Mid-Atlantic Region Space Science Broker program served as one of a national network of seven broker/facilitators to provide education and outreach services for the NASA Science mission directorate. The broker/facilitators served as regional points of contact for space science education activities associated with the Science directorate. MARSSB provided services to Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
MARSSB generated numerous accomplishments, including having a presence at science and education conferences, creating a website for the general public, designing informal education workshops, brokering a variety of science-education partnerships, organizing a NASA balloon science workshop, targeting outreach to underserved communities, helping develop an online graduate course on lunar education, and creating a workshop for preservice educators about teaching the concept of light.
