Mission Geography: linking national geography standards, innovative technologies and NASA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe Mission Geography, a project to develop curriculum support materials for students in grades K-12 that link the content, skills, and perspectives of the National Geography Standards with NASA's missions and research. Mission Geography (MG) is apartnership between the Geography Education National Implementation Project (GENIP), representing the geography education community, and NASA. First we outline the need for MG, providing a rationale for the project's development of educational materials that feature mapping technologies. Second. we describe MG's pedagogical approach and the sequence of remote sensing experiences embedded in the materials. One of the key project foci is to develop student and teacher skills and capacity in remote sensing and spatial problem solving. We end with the dissemination plan by which MG will be introduced to educators nationwide and a call for additional materials that link remote sensing and classroom geography education.