Mission 12 in full force

Mission 12 is operating in full force. Teachers have piqued student curiosities about microgravity and all the astronauts on the International Space Station have to adapt to. Students are thinking about what it's like to function in a place where gravity is seemingly turned off. The students learned that there is gravity is space (it's what keeps the moon moving around the earth, and keeps planets orbiting the sun), but they also learned how the ISS stays in orbit and why this international lab is so important to science on earth.

Once students learned about gravity, they started asking questions that could possibly work into experiments for SSEP. This is exactly how previous winners worked with their ideas. Our first winners wondered if polymers in diapers would work in space. They envisioned families living and working in space one day, and realized polymer absorption would be important. The next group learned through their research about life on the ISS that astronauts get kidney stones easily, and they wondered if there was a natural remedy they could use instead of harsher medicines. They designed an experiment testing chanca piedra on kidney stones. Last year's winners were curious about how concrete would form in space, because one of the team members was helping lay a walkway on their property at home. Through student research and daily lives, students become curious and wonder how these things might work without gravity involved. It's always fun to see!

During the next steps, students will begin to develop the steps of their experiment. They've asked their question, and now they will be determining the information needed to answer the question, and how the steps they will need to design the experiment. With the SSEP minilab, there are a maximum of three steps, so students will need to reduce their experiment to its smallest possible design.

We are approximately a month away from submitting proposals! We are looking forward to hearing about your student designs!

Mission 11 team receives their experiment from the ISS!

Students Danyel Archuleta, Cole Rose, and Christian Steele were excited to see their experiment come back to them from the International Space Station. The experiment was delivered to STEAM, where assistant principal Candice Cook helped the students perform their post flight observations and comparisons with their ground truth experiment. Students are working with a cement company to help them pressure test their experiments, so they can quantify the differences between the flight experiment and the ground truth. They will report their findings back to SSEP as a formal report. As they stated in their presentation in Washington DC, BISD's Space Program is "Laying the foundation for space exploration." (credit Ms. Quisenberry)

Mission 11 team prepares for experiment implementation.

All BISD eyes are currently on the International Space Station, waiting anxiously for our Mission 11 team's experiment to be implemented on or around Sept. 15th. This is in the U-2 time frame, which means the experiment will be conducted two days before undocking from the ISS. Shortly after undocking, the Dragon experiment delivery system will splash down in the Atlantic, and will head to Houston where all experiments will be returned to the scientist teams. Mission 11's Concrete Compressive Strength will then receive their experiment and carry out their comparison between their ground truth and flight experiments. We cannot wait to see the results!

Mission 11 team Concrete Compressive Strength ready for launch!

The BISD Space Program has had a busy and productive summer. Just ask our SSEP Mission 11 winning team, "Concrete Compressive Strength." Not only did they represent our space program at the SSEP 2017 National Conference in Washington D.C., they also prepped and loaded their minilab and sent it off to NanoRacks in Houston to prepare for lift off on August 10th!

The SSEP 2017 National Conference was held on June 28-29 in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The students presented their experiment design "Concrete Compressive Strength" to other student researchers, astronauts, and aerospace engineers. Their experiment really tapped into the curiosity of many researchers there. One scientist told them they waited all day to hear their presentation, while another praised them for being on the frontier of space research. Dr. Goldstein personally congratulated the team on their presentation and experiment design.

On July 10th, the students and their teacher/facilitator, Ms. Mindy Quisenberry, met at STEAM Middle School in order to connect with NanoRacks scientist Brittany Balcom and to load their minilab to prepare it for flight. The students loaded two minilabs: one that will be sent to the International Space Station, and one that will be kept on campus at STEAM Middle School in order for the students to be able to conduct their ground truth experiments at the same time as the astronauts. When their experiment returns to Earth, they will then be able to compare the compressive strength between the two experiments. Their flight is scheduled to launch on August 10th aboard SpaceX-12 spacecraft.

In BISD, it's real science all the time!

See pictures of the team's summer events below:

Mission 9 and Mission 11 Update

During the 2015-16 school year, Burleson ISD participated in Mission 9 of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. The winning team was "Kidney Stone Conundrum", who wondered if kidney stones could be dissolved by chanca piedra in microgravity. The team members were fifth grade students from the Academy at Nola Dunn: Cooper Williams, Caleb Quisenberry, and Hannah Greenhill. Their presentation at the SSEP National Conference, held at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, can be viewed below. On February 23, 2017, the Mission 9 experiment was loaded onto a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket and took off to the International Space Station. During its four week stay on the ISS, an astronaut performed the first and second interactions of their experiment while the students performed their ground truth experiment interactions at the same time. Today, March 19, 2017, the Dragon space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, and the student experiments are on their way back to Houston, and then finally Burleson ISD. Students will harvest their experiment, collect data, make comparisons, and issue a final report of their findings. We will soon know if kidney stones can be dissolved in microgravity in the same way as on Earth.

The Mission 11 team will soon be preparing to go to Washington D.C. in order to present their experiment at the SSEP National Conference as well. They have been working on their experiment, fine tuning the water to concrete ratios, and waiting for their experiment to move through Flight Safety Review at NanoRacks, LLC, and NASA. Their flight should tentatively fly some time at the end of Summer or the beginning of Fall.

Mission 11 Flight Experiment Selected

From the time the students turned in their proposals and all the way to Space Night, judging teams were reviewing and discussing student researcher proposals online. On Space Night, the judges had narrowed their group of proposals down to a few, and they interviewed those teams before making their final decisions. At the judges' dinner, the judges narrowed this field to the final three proposals that could represent our district in Washington D.C. I say could, because at any point the national judges could have rejected our selection. This is the reason no announcement is made: we wait until we receive final word that all three proposals have been accepted for Step 2 Review. This takes a week.

Once they are accepted, we wait for the National Step 2 Review board to meet and decide on the flight experiment, which is the winning experiment. Given the caliber of the national judges, this is not an easy feat. To see an example of who makes up this board, see here. The Step 2 Board met on December 5th and 7th, and then it was the waiting game to hear from them. We received word of the winning proposal on Thursday after the three finalist teams were acknowledged by the School Board.

We are proud of all of the proposal teams. It is not easy to develop an experiment from scratch, let alone an experiment that has to fit in a tube, and only test microgravity's effect on something. The students worked hard, and the teachers indicated they will be building on this experiment design experience for the rest of the year!

The three finalist teams were:

1. STEAM's "Invertebrate Issue" developed by Principal Investigator Caleb Quisenberry and Co-Investigators Philip Hamilton and Billy Ward. Teacher Facilitator: Mindy Quisenberry.

2. STEAM's "Concrete Compressive Strength" developed by Principal Investigator Cole Rose and Co-Investigators Danyelle Archuleta, Mayleia Parker, and Christian Steele. Teacher Facilitator: Mindy Quisenberry.

3. Kerr's "Spectacular Nanosponge" written by Co-Principal Investigators Abby Adams, Bailey Schafer, Katie Shue, and Taylor Walker. Teacher Facilitator: Allison Buckingham.

The National Step 2 Review Board, who met at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, selected the flight experiment for Mission 11, due to launch in Summer 2017: (drumroll.....)

And the Flight Experiment for Mission 11 is: Concrete Compressive Strength designed by Cole Rose, Danyelle Archuleta, Mayleia Parker, and Christian Steele!

Congratulations to STEAM Middle School, to Ms. Mindy Quisenberry, and to the student researchers who designed an awesome experiment! We look forward to watching them present their experiment design at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and watching their experiment launch in 2017!

In the meantime, we are excitedly waiting for Mission 9's launch at the end of this month! STEAM's Cooper Williams and Caleb Quisenberry and Kerr's Hannah Greenhill have already presented their experiment design in D.C., have prepared and shipped their minilabs to NanoRacks for flight safety review, and are just waiting for launch! We'll keep you posted on the official launch date soon!

Congratulations everyone!

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program [or SSEP] is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with DreamUp PBC and NanoRacks LLC, which are working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory. SSEP is the first pre- college STEM education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and implemented as an on-orbit commercial space venture.

SSEP in Full Swing

Student teams are knee deep in experiment design as part of their 6th grade science curriculum. They have now formed over 200 teams, and all teams are focused on their experiment designs. This means students are asking testable questions, and then figuring out how to test them. This is not an easy task! There are a lot of constraints: the experiment has to take place in a 9 mL silicon tube that can be clipped into three separate chambers, there can be no data collection or observations recorded during the experiment, and the experiment needs to be "fixed" so the results aren't skewed when it returns to gravity's influence. This is something that certainly stretches students in ways they've never been stretched before. It also stretches teachers! It can be difficult as science teachers to stay ahead of student questions. Even young children ask good questions: Why is the sky blue? Where does sound come from when you turn on the radio? How does electricity work? Fifth and sixth grade students ask even more complex questions, so that the students and teachers have to seek out experts to help answer them. This is good, because it connects students with professionals working in their fields of study, and it gives them a glimpse of the things they do! Besides experiment design, this is probably the most exciting aspect of SSEP.

If you haven't done so already, save November 15th on your calendar. It is an exciting time for students, and it's a great night for Science!

Resources on Mission 11 Website

It's safe to say all participating students have been through the introduction of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, and have learned about gravity's role in how things work in our world as well as how things tend to work in microgravity. These are important concepts, because it helps the students develop an intuition about how things might work, and therefore develop questions that can be tested in microgravity. It's also safe to say some of the students have developed their testable question, and are moving on to researching how they can answer it. This is the part of experiment design that can be the most frustrating part, but it is also the part in which students will experience so much growth. This is real science at this point, not verifications. They haven't been given the question, or the steps to follow. They are asking their own questions and creating the steps and experiment that will answer that question. And the answer is likely unknown! That's the beauty of the program. Students learn to ask questions that probably won't have answers, until it is tested and tried in a lab that is highly sought after: The International Space Station.

As the students move on to proposal writing, remember the resources on this site that are available to them. Under the "Teacher and Student Resources" tab, there is an "AP Style Reference Page." This page offers many examples for students and teachers to follow, and has the appropriate guidelines. Under the "Additional Resources" tab, there are resources for note taking, as well as online search techniques. There are website suggestions for biologicals, a microbe WIKI, and even a "Scientific and Technical Writing Tips and Checklist" document, which will prove valuable during proposal writing time.

Students are fully engaged in SSEP, and are pushing the boundaries of science as they know it. It's a good time to be a 6th grader in Burleson ISD!

Great PD=Great Teaching

I was talking to a principal yesterday about our district's SSEP webinar last month. Dr. Jeff Goldstein, the director of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, which is the parent organization for SSEP, painted a wonderful mental picture of inquiry/evidence based learning, what it truly is, and how students are born asking questions and demanding responses. I left that webinar wanting the entire district to hear what he had to say. I told this principal that the webinar was the best PD I've ever had. That was no exaggeration. I've had a lot of professional development. A lot. I've even had specialized training in Situational Leadership, the practical applications of possible hostage scenarios, and of course many years of subject specific and grade level specific trainings. Even with all of these trainings, I still whole-heartedly say this webinar is the best PD I've ever had. Dr. Goldstein talks about science, how it is multidisciplinary, and how SSEP works, but what he is really talking about is valuing our students and their education by tapping into their natural curiosity and inquiry. I just watched the webinar again, and I immediately envisioned lessons and experiments that would help students understand this process.

I encourage you to go back and view the webinar again. If you haven't watched it yet, you need to! It will focus your attention on the right things as teachers, and will remind you of critical information as you move forward in experiment design. I'm going to go watch the best PD I've ever received....again! Happy designing!

Run at the hard parts first - Google X

As educators, we think in terms of lists, timelines, data, and grades. It's how we manage tracking the progress and learning of so many students at once. It's an important part of what we do. However, when it comes to taking risks, and working with a design process, the things we rely so heavily on to determine growth might be the very thing that prevents our students from taking risks and making stretch mistakes. Students may think, "I'm really curious about this, but it's too risky, so I'm going to do that so I can get a good grade." They also aren't willing to look for feedback from peers, and do not see the design process as multiple iterations. Instead, they see it as a checklist to work through. Looking for fatal flaws in their design means going back to something they already "checked off" their list, and represents a step backwards.

There are two videos that helped me in thinking about this. The first is Astro Teller's TED talk, "The Unexpected Benefit of Celebrating Failure". It is a perfect example of how we should be working to inspire our student experiment designers. If we see their designs as "iterations" from the beginning, then students see their designs as a work in progress, with multiple opportunities to update and correct. The second is "The Backward Bike" by Smarter Every Day's Destin Sandlin. He uses a backward bike to prove that we have certain mindsets, or biases, that are difficult to change. It might be possible that our need for lists, timelines, data, and grades are a mindset, or even bias, that is keeping our students from really following their curiosity and developing critical and creative thinking!

Astro Teller's TED Talk

The Backwards Brain Bike

Experiment Design

This week, students learned about gravity and how it works. They were asked whether or not there was gravity in space, and they learned why astronauts feel weightless. This is important, because this background knowledge will help them develop an intuition about how particular systems here on earth might behave in a microgravity setting. This information is relatively new to the general public (watch the video below and see if you can find the artist's misunderstanding) , and it means BISD students are on the front lines of science education.

Students will take this knowledge about microgravity, and will then begin to formulate questions that will lead to their experiment designs. Next week is an important week in SSEP, as students will begin to develop their understanding of real science processes. Not only will they be developing their own questions, they will also be designing an experiment to test it.

Here is the video of an emerging technology that could be useful in space:

The First Man-made Leaf

Keep Them Curious.

Before we begin Mission 11, I just want to share this meme featuring Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and all around science enthusiast. This is just as true today as it was in his lifetime (he passed away in 1996.)

Lesson Plans or student investigations: CASIS, a partner of SSEP.

Mission 11