Sun Earth Day 2002

By Elaine Lewis

On March 20, 2002 (Sun Earth Day 2002), NASA "Celebrated the Equinox" with students and educators through a live web cast that could also be seen on NASA TV. This broadcast reached millions of interested students at NASA Centers, classrooms, museums, science centers, and Native American communities. To create a unique and exciting event the SSDOO-based part of the Sun Earth Connection Education Forum (SECEF) team developed a special component that identified parallels between NASA Sun-Earth Connection science and embedded science found within Native American cultures. The overall program provided educators with a broadcast and website that could be easily integrated into the classroom curriculum.

NASA Education Offices, Educator Resource Centers, museums and colleges trained over 8,000 teachers, impacted thousands of additional educators and motivated millions of students, utilizing the materials developed for Sun-Earth Day 2002. SECEF also supported over 500 scientists and amateur astronomers with educator kits designed for the event, as well as making available on the website specific ideas for their use. The number of persons participating more than tripled the number involved in Sun-Earth Day 2001. 31 states participated each having multiple events involving thousands of people. The events were all unique and were developed specifically to share the science of the Sun. Those events included single classroom visits, Native American story telling, solar telescope viewing , sunspotters, solar cooking, cross cultural connections, hands-on activities, solar physicist and astronomer's formal and informal presentations.

In addition the SECEF team collaborated with NASA Langley's NASA Connect team to add a special opportunity for educators of mathematics through a NASA Connect TV program, "Having a Solar Blast". This program aired on March 28th through NASA TV, and continued to air on 56 PBS stations, 84 Instructional TV stations, and 89 Total Access stations during the month of April. Direct participation involved 260,000 registered educators and over 8 million students with a potential audience of 70 million.