Challenger Center: Earth Science Challenge: Lesson 2

TEACHING THE LESSON

Materials

An LCD projector to share the image with the entire class, and/or printed copies of the photograph
Photoshop (optional)
Student worksheets
Internet connected computers

Student Instructions

How to post your journal and files on the Challenger Kids’ Earth Science Forum

Student Worksheets

Science Journal

Lesson Preparation

1. Students should have a basic understanding of the International Space Station and its orbit. You can complete the activity How do we track the space station’s location? prior to this activity.

2. Review the website, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography. You may wish to choose the image yourself (for younger students), or have the students choose the image together with you. With older students you can walk them through the process of selecting and downloading an image and have them choose the image on their own.

3. Review the instructions for having your students post work to the Earth Science Kid’s Forum. You can register them yourself (individually or by team) or have them register themselves. Students will have to have their parents sign a Media Release form to participate in the moderated forum.

The forum is moderated by education staff from Challenger Center for Space Science Education and is an integral part of the project, as students can share their thoughts with others from around the world and at other Challenger Learning Centers.

3. Review the student worksheet; make copies.

Resources

The Gateway of Astronaut Photography - The most complete online collection of astronaut photographs of the Earth, The database tracks the locations, supporting data, and digital images for astronaut’s photographs from the Mercury missions in the early 1960s to the ISS. Images coming down from the International Space Station are processed on a daily basis. 777,550 views of the Earth include 331,695 from the International Space Station.

Astronaut Views of the Home Planet: Earth from Space - Searchable database by cities, Earth landscapes, Earth-Human Interactions, Distinctive features, hurricanes and weather, Earth’s Water Habitats, Geographic Regions.

Astronaut Views of the Home Planet: Earth from Space Clickable Map

Earth From Space - Quotes from Astronauts and a selection of dramatic images.

Lesson

Begin the activity with students in the full group brainstorming the answer to the following questions:

What does the Earth look like from space? (i.e. in day we see weather and land, at night we see cities and fires)
What environmental features can we see from space? (i.e. forests, mountains, coastlines, oceans, rivers, clouds, hurricanes)
Can we see evidence of human impact? (i.e. cities, burning of fields)

Tell students that they will be acting like astronauts and scientists as they observe the Earth from Space. They will be trying to determine what features you can see from space and what that tells us about the Earth and our particular region. You can show students a selection of different images taken by astronauts of the Earth and ask them what features they represent (glaciers, mountains, volcanoes, storms, rivers, oceans, islands, coastlines, cities, etc.) as a warm up to the activity.

Then use NASA’s Clickable Map to locate and download an image of your local Challenger Learning Center and community (or have the image already selected and ready to be shared on screen, projector or through handout copies).

After you have clicked on the map, click on show thumbnails of the images. Choose an image that includes your Challenger Learning Center. Then click on the image and choose download. It will take a few minutes to get the high resolution image from the URL provided for you. Right click and save the image to your desktop.

Gateway to Astronaut Photography Clickable Map (1961-present)
Click for a larger image

Click the box that says Show Thumbnails
Click for a larger image

Choose Image and click on See all metadata, images and captions
Click for a larger image

Click on Request under Large Images to Request for Downloading
It will take a few minutes
Click for a larger image

You will be given a URL, in a few minutes click on it and you will download your image. Right click and save it to your computer.
Click for a larger image

To enhance the image in Photoshop, open the image and choose

Image>Adjustments>Levels

Move the left and right arrows to the edges of the histogram curve. This will make the dark areas lighter and the lighter areas darker. Then view the image at 100%. That is as close as you can get without distorting the image. You should be able to see a great deal of detail. To see screenshots of how to do this, download Image Adjustment in Photoshop (doc, 5.3 MB).

As a group explore the image together. Have one student write down on the black board all of the features that the students point out. Review the list and point out which features are most likely a result of Earth-Human interaction (i.e. cities, burning of fields, soil erosion, silt from a river, etc).

Ask students how they could determine the scale of the image (i.e. find the distance between two places they can identify using another map, locate something they know the size of, like a football field, etc.) Open Google Maps and work with students to get a similar map that identifies some of the places and features they pointed out. Try to determine the scale of the image.

This sample image of Tallahassee shows smoke. Click for a larger image	Looking at a similar image in Google Maps. Click for a larger image
Zooming in on clear cut forest in the same area, perhaps due to logging. The smoke may have been from controlled burning. Click for a larger image

With students in small groups with access to a computer (or all together), have each group select an area they would like to learn more about. For example, a plume of smoke from an undetermined source, a building complex that is unidentified, silt coming from a river that could be polluting the coastline, forests that appear to have been logged, etc.

Have students complete the student worksheet and present their research and observations with the rest of the class. Students will be asked to think about what, if any impact what they are observing may be having on the environment and what this area would look like from space in 20 years.

Students should then visit http://www.challengerkids.org and use their user name and password (that you have made for them – see Lesson Preparation and Instructions) to log in and post their findings for sharing with others. If time, they can comment on other student’s posted journals.

If you choose to extend the project to 2 class periods, you can have students use the Library or approved web resources to do additional research the area of interest to determine specific impacts to the environment. Students can make a video or PowerPoint presentation to share with the rest of the class.

Extension Activities

For an extension activity, students can research a series of images taken by Richard Garriott from the International Space Station for the Nature Conservancy. Richard Garriott, private space explorer, partnered with The Nature Conservancy to identify environmental change and successful protection projects around the world. He photographed sites selected by Nature Conservancy scientists during his flight last year to the International Space Station. The photographs will be used by scientists to compare the ecological changes within one generation. Students can explore and download the images and complete research on why these sites are important to conservationists using the information and links provided for each site.

The follow activities are for students interested in learning how to spot change over time in satellite images of the planet.

Investigating Urban Sprawl & Land Cover Change in the Classroom
A selection of lesson plans using Landsat data and images. Students investigate such topics as decreases in vegetation and the growth of cities.
Grade Levels: 5-8, 9-12
Earth Images for Education: Tracking Change Over Time
A classroom activity from the USGS about tracking changes over time. This activity uses images from the Landsat satellite tracking changes on the earth over a time span of 30 years. Grade Levels: 7-12. Teacher's Packet.
Annotating Change in Satellite Images
Observe and analyze land use change over time using before and after pictures, and create an animated view.
Grade Levels: 10-12, with material and techniques appropriate for 6-9
What Environmental Changes Can We See with Satellites?
Exploring Earth Tutorial - One type of change that can be observed in satellite images is the growth of urban areas. Las Vegas, Nevada is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States.
Grade Levels 5-8
Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change
USGS Earthshots introduces remote sensing by showing examples of how environmental changes look from space.
Grade levels 8-12.
NASA's Earth Observatory Image of the Day