CLUB PROGRAMMES

The Spacelink Club Programmes will provide extra-curricular and out-of-hours activities in schools, offering an exciting introduction to the world of space and engendering a spirit of enquiry in students.

In the UK the main user group will be young people attending the thousands of science-based homework clubs, after-school clubs and computer clubs. Science and maths teachers may also benefit through their ability to access topical materials, enabling them to become more confident in their use of space-related materials in the classroom.

One of the club programmes will be designed to meet the UK government's review recommendations on "Extending Opportunity". This will aim to improve users' motivation, build their self-esteem, help them become more effective learners and provide an interesting introduction to new classroom topics.

SPACE-RELATED PROGRAMMES

Projects will include video and audio link-ups to facilities and activities such as the International Space Station or the US Shuttle and a programme of visits to space and science establishments, to help familiarise students with the realities of space, science and technology.

The Club will also offer a range of information, discussion and study pages relating to space and satellites as well as providing easily accessible useful links to related space sites for use by students without teacher direction. Students will have hands-on opportunities to build and launch mini rockets and stratosphere balloon probes.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH ACTIVITIES

The larger space agencies often make some space experimental facilities available through their 'Education Project Outreach Activities'. These are currently accessed either directly by schools or through a university and mostly used for extra-curricular purposes. Spacelink will liaise with the agencies to ensure its activities remain complementary to the agencies' own activities. By arrangement, Spacelink may occasionally where relevant incorporate selected non curriculum activities from agencies into its Club Programme.

One of the most innovative current outreach projects relates to micro-gravity experiments. This is managed by the Italian 'University Among the Stars' and provides opportunities for selected schools/students to design and conduct their own experiments in the micro-gravity environment of space. These payloads are carried on Space Shuttle missions and plans are in hand for similar experiments to be conducted in the International Space Station.

Another facility is the NASA Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) project, in which students aged 9-18 years co-ordinate their observations within 5 minutes (or at most 15 minutes) of the satellite's overpass. Their observations are an integral part of the research being done by the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) team at NASA.

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Duplication only with the permission of the Spacelink Learning Foundation.

Last modified: 17. 11. 04