Via Damaris comes the news that NASA is sponsoring an essay contest for middle and junior high school students:
The Innovative Partnerships Program at NASA Headquarters, in conjunction with the Office of Education, announces the NASA 50th Anniversary Essay Competition for middle and junior high school students during the 2007-2008 academic year. The essay competition consists of two separate topics each with a limit of 500 words. The first topic challenges students to describe how they benefit in their everyday lives from aerospace technologies built by NASA over the last 50 years. The second topic requires students to imagine how their everyday lives will have changed because of NASA aerospace technology years into the future. Complete details for the competition can be found below.
Very cool idea! I think this kind of thing is great. It encourages kids to think about what space has done for them, and that’s a good thing. NASA has done a lot of amazing things these past five decades and kids ages 11-15 may not really appreciate it. The Shuttle is the only rocket they’ve ever seen launch, in many cases (cripes, college kids were born after STS-1 launched!), and they don’t know of all the good NASA has done. I’d like to see schools giving this out as an extra credit assignment, or even as a writing assignment in class.
So for those teachers reading this blog: Notice of Intent is due by December 7, and the essays are due on January 7, 2008.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:42 am
VERY cool logo! Great idea for sure. I’m hoping my 12 and 14 year olds will enter. Thanks for the tip. A little mulah towards college never hurts. Will the Little BA be entering?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:07 am
This is great! I am forwarding it to Aleks and to Chris at GWIZ. Maybe somehow they can get involved.
BAMOM
November 7th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Ah, this isn’t very good timing for getting a maximum response. The deadline falls just after the Winter break and just before the end of the first semester; students will be stressed about finals and tired from the long two- week vacation. Lead time on an essay contest like this should have begun in September with a deadline sometime in March or April where Spring break can allow some time for editing and completing a final draft. I realize that only 6 to 8th./9th. graders are invited, but this short deadline almost insures that only the science students will try to participate, and even then only a few because of the end of semester workloads. It surely stresses teachers and parents who might assist by proofreading the essays as well. I realize its “only” 500 words, but given the homework most kids have to deal with this short lead/completion time could be a cause for a pass on the essay for many kids.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I hate to break it to you, but quite a few of us grad students working on PhDs were also born after STS-1. I was born 2 months too late
November 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Darn, only open to middle schoolers. Curse you high school!
February 20th, 2008 at 9:56 am
We are also conducting an Astronomy Essay Contest for ages 5-18.
Complete details can be found on the first page at
http://www.dale93108.com/Meteor.html
Dale Lowdermilk
Santa Barbara, CA