12 City
schools to take part in lunar link-up
It will be a lunar link up between 12 city schools and the same number
at Greenville in North Carolina from November 2005 to March 2006.For the first time, the Nehru Planetarium here and the department of mathematics and science education at the East Carolina University have teamed up to educate
students of both places about the moon.
This is happening at a time when India will launch a
mission to the moon in 2007-08.The project will go a long way in familiarizing youngsters about various aspects of the moon, and in the bargain help them to appreciate why our country is lunar-bound. It will be an effective public outreach program about the Indian moon mission ,planetarium director Piyush Pandey said.
Pandey said that the lunar collaboration should have begun in October .It had to be postponed to November because a number of schools are closed on account of Dussehra.
The students will collaborate and together observe the lunar cycle from opposite sides of the earth through the internet, e-mail and video conferencing .For this program a special site has also been created http://www.moodle.com that is yet to be activated.
Pandey said the program was essentially meant for students of standards three and six. But adjustments can be made to include those from other classes as well who are interested, he said. For Mumbai students, there will initially be an orientation program at the Nehru Planetarium .After this the students will make their observations either through a telescope or the naked eye, make recordings and exchange notes with their counterparts in the US from their schools and homes. We will provide all the help .We may take telescopes to different schools if necessary, he said.
Pandey said that the Mumbai-Carolina student moon project will also help to clear misconceptions about the lunar cycles The project will group students in Mumbai and the US as they explore the phases of the moon. Incidentally ,it is taking place at a time when collaboration between both the countries is being strengthened in the space sector.
For example ,Chandrayaan-I , India’s maiden mission to the moon will carry two instruments of Nasa. The project staff, consisting of Michael Bosse and Shawn Laatsch in US and Pandey here will produce a number of papers for submission to educational journals using the data collected by the students.
The findings will also be presented at national and international conferences, Pandey said.