SIR-C EDUCATION PROGRAM (SIR-CED) INTRODUCTION ù Educational Goals Welcome to the SIR-C Education Program or SIR-CED for short! SIR-CED is an education initiative based around the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's imaging radar program and is designed for Middle School and High School students. The goals of this initiative are to: 1. Help improve the overall performance of US students in Middle School and High School in mathematics, science and geography, in accordance with the national goals for education. 2. Provide an easy-to-use set of resources for teachers in the modern classroom. 3. Spark students' interest in earth science, mathematics, computing, geography, physics and engineering as subjects they might consider for college. 4. Encourage students to think about their environment and how to monitor it. The earth's environment presents problems that concern us all. The headlines are full of dire warnings about global warming and the greenhouse effect, or instances of earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes. Many people are concerned enough to want to find out more. Younger people in particular, will flock to buy magazines and attend exhibitions concerning the environment, and are often concerned enough to join in demonstrations or organize petitions which address environmental issues. Ask your students how many of them have a T-shirt with 'Save the Rain Forest' written on it, for example. ù What is SIR-CED? SIR-CED is based around NASA's imaging radar program. Imaging radar is a key technology used by scientists to monitor the earth's environment. SIR-C, or Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C, is the latest generation of imaging radars produced by JPL for NASA, and is scheduled to fly on the Space Shuttle in April 1994, with two follow-on flights planned in 1994 and 1995. SIR-C represents the state-of-the-art in radar imaging technology, and will offer scientists a unique look at the earth from space. Scientists will use the radar images provided by SIR-C to view areas of the earth that are normally obscured by clouds, to monitor deforestation, to search for buried river channels in the Sahara Desert, and to estimate the extent of flooding in river basins, among other things. The SIR-CED program is designed to help meet some of the goals set out in NASA's Strategic Plan for Education (see Further Reading). In putting together this initiative, NASA and JPL's aim is to reach as many Middle School and High School students as possible in the Southern California area and across the nation in order to: 1. Carry the message that NASA is actively pursuing Earth observation programs under the umbrella of 'Mission to Planet Earth'. 2. Teach them that imaging radars are an important and current part of these programs. 3. Show how imaging radars work and how they are used to monitor the world around us. 4. Develop practical experiments and procedures to assist educators in teaching earth science, computing and mathematical principles to Middle School and High School students, in Southern California and across the United States. Although some segments of the SIR-CED program are based around the SIR-C mission, the program is designed to be used with data from a wide range of imaging radars. Examples of data from earlier imaging radar missions can be found in the CD-ROM accompanying this package, including images from Magellan of the planet Venus. The software included in the SIR-CED package should be flexible enough to handle radar image data from future missions, too. The SIR-CED program should be useful as an introduction to imaging radar and its role in monitoring the earth's environment over the next decade or so. ù Who should get involved? The SIR-CED package is designed as a two-week unit with one lesson per day for Middle Schools and High Schools, with a possible additional week to allow the students time to complete a research project. The material can be taught as part of an earth science class, a computing course, or a geography class. Some material may be too advanced for Middle School students and the teacher may wish to skip over those parts of the package. For High School students, progress through the first stages of the package may be too slow, so the teacher may elect to head for the project part of the package sooner. The image processing software contained in the CD-ROM is quite powerful; only a few capabilities are explored here. With a smaller group the teacher may decide to explore the potential of the image processing software further: animating sequences of images; editing photographs; merging images together, etc. The software comes complete with an electronic copy of the documentation to allow this further exploration. The SIR-CED package is designed to stand on its own and can be used in any classroom with the right equipment. There will be a special focus during the SIR-C mission on schools that are located within or near regions where we will obtain radar imagery with SIR-C. Schools in these focus areas may participate in actual ground data collection prior to, during, and after SIR-C data acquisition and in radar calibration during the missions. The SIR-C primary sites, called supersites, include Death Valley, California; Chickasha, Oklahoma; Durham, North Carolina; and Raco, Michigan. Educational activities at each site will be coordinated with the Principal Investigator for that site. JPL has a responsibility to the community to enhance the educational opportunities of local schools, and SIR-CED will include a number of these schools as well. Because a number of local schools are already involved with JPL and the California Institute of Technology in pilot programs, these schools will provide an excellent testing ground for new curriculum materials as they are developed after the first mission. ù Components: The SIR-CED package consists of the following components: 1. Teachers' Resource Guide 2. Presentation Materials 3. Lesson Guides, including activities for students 4. A CD-ROM containing: - radar images - shuttle hand-held photographs taken by the astronauts - digitized location and topographic maps - ground photos - software for image display and analysis - documentation 5. A selection of videos about imaging radar The Teachers' Resource Guide was written to provide detailed information for teachers using the SIR-CED package. It is divided up into five Modules: ù Module 1 - Mission to Planet Earth ù Module 2 - How Radar Images the Earth ù Module 3 - What is SIR-C/X-SAR? ù Module 4 - Looking at Radar Images ù Module 5 - Exploration and Discovery Module 1 introduces NASA's Mission to Planet Earth and how scientists use remote sensing to monitor the environment. Module 2 answers the question 'What is imaging radar?' and describes what radar images mean. Module 3 addresses the SIR-C/X-SAR mission: what it is; what the scientific aims of the mission are; who is involved, etc. Module 4 looks at sample data sets for a couple of the sites selected by the SIR-C science team. Module 5 sets the students off on their own, exploring the data contained on the SIR-CED CD-ROM, discovering things for themselves and then reporting on them as a scientist would. Corresponding to Modules 1 to 3 of the SIR-CED package is a set of Presentation Materials. These consist of viewgraphs or overheads which can be copied onto a transparency and used with an overhead projector. Alternatively, they could be presented straight off the computer if your Macintosh has Microsoft Word software and an LCD unit to project directly onto a screen. The presentation materials contain graphics plus text and are intended to be used to present the ideas contained in Modules 1-3. The Lesson Guide is also divided up into five modules, following the format of the Teachers' Resource Guide. The Lesson Guide consists of planned activities for the students, which can be photocopied and handed out, or distributed electronically by copying them onto your students' computers. A number of the lessons involve computer activities using data from the SIR-CED CD-ROM. The CD-ROM is intended as the first in a series and is a pre-SIR-C launch look at imaging radar and at some the sites to be imaged by SIR-C/X-SAR. It contains a collection of images (including radar images from earlier missions), documentation (including the Teachers' Resource Guide, Presentation Materials and Lesson Guide), and software for displaying the image data and some of the text files. This data set is unique; never before has such a comprehensive set of radar data and supporting data been collected together. CD-ROM's planned for the future will contain radar image data and actual results from the SIR-C/X-SAR mission. A video to accompany the SIR-CED package is available from the Teacher Resource Center at JPL. It contains an introduction to the role imaging radar can play in monitoring the earth's environment (the EOS SAR video); a time-lapse movie of the SIR-C and X-SAR antenna under construction; a movie showing imaging radar data being collected on an aircraft; and some examples of radar images from the Magellan mission to Venus. The documentation which accompanies the SIR-CED package has been written in Helvetica 14, a font with a fairly large typeface. This was done so that the material would be legible if projected onto an overhead projector screen, straight off the computer screen (using an LCD perhaps). Thus if a point requires further explanation, the teacher could pick out the appropriate part of the Teachers' Resource Guide and display it for the class. ù What is needed? The ideal computer set-up for SIR-CED is: A Macintosh, PC, SUN or INDIGO computer, with an 8-bit color display screen, at least 8MBytes of RAM, and a hard disk with at least 40Mbytes of disk space. A CD reader connected to your computer. If only one computer is available, you might also want an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) device to project your computer display onto an overhead projector screen or a hook-up to project the computer display onto a TV screen. A printer (optional). The computer skills required to use the computer part of the SIR-CED package are the basic skills such as pointing, clicking, opening a file, dragging, copying and saving a file. All of these skills can be learned very easily for the Macintosh using the 'Getting around the Macintosh' package which comes with System 7.0. On the Macintosh, most of the files in the SIR-CED package can be opened by just double-clicking on them. For a few file types, the appropriate application should be opened first by double-clicking, then the file can be opened from within the application. For the PC, SUN or INDIGO workstations, it is relatively straightforward to display images using the IMDISP and XV software provided. We have tried to keep the size of files on the CD-ROM below 1.4 Mbytes, so they can be copied and distributed using a floppy disk, and also so that they do not require vast amounts of memory to open them. You may also need: Access to a photocopying machine. An overhead projector and screen. A good Atlas or a prominent map of the world. A VHS video player (optional). A Television (optional). ù Acknowledgments The SIR-CED package was put together by the efforts of the following people: Anthony Freeman JoBea Way Ellen O'Leary of JPL and: Kathleen Crandall David Gunderson Robert Veas who are all teachers within the LA Unified School District. Karl Erickson, under a SURF student scholarship, assembled and formatted the data for the CD-ROM. Many of the images used in the CD-ROM were collected by JoBea Way's Durfee Foundation students for summer 1993 (Alicyn Campbell, Freedom Dean, Timothy Garrett, Hillary Hartley, Aaron Moshiashwill, Jonathon Woodring, Eric Mortenson, Eric Cooper, Marta Rives and Robert Parrott). The authors would like to thank: Mike Sander, Diane Evans and Ellen Stofan of the JPL SIR-C Project Office for their encouragement and support; Miriam Baltuck and Shelby Tilford of NASA Headquarters for the same; Rich Alvidrez of JPL's Teacher Resource Center for his welcome advice and for starting the JPL teacher enhancement program; T.H. Culhane of Jefferson High and Scott Phelps of John Muir High Schools for allowing us to test some of our ideas on their students and for their comments; the Durfee Foundation for their financial support of the Durfee students; Mike Kobrick for his help in using the scanner; Jenny Cruz for her help in using the Macintosh and for her patience; Lyn Norikane who wrote the software for the Macsigma0 package; Bill Emery of U. Colorado for permission to incorporate Imagic into the CD-ROM; Jeff Plaut and Mohammed Azeem for their comments on the manuscript; Annie Richardson of the JPL Radar Data Center for her help in finding just the right images; Steve Adams of JPL for some great DEM's and other images; Mike Martin, Kristy Marski and David Hecox at JPL's Planetary Data Center for their excellent help in producing the actual CD; Bobbi Grable for her help with typing and other stuff and all our other colleagues at JPL who assisted us in any way. ù Further reading Throughout the documents included in this package, we have avoided the use of technical references, since we feel that the SIR-CED package should stand alone, and not require a great deal of plowing through reference books. We also felt that the resources to access reference books or papers might be unavailable to some teachers using this package. Nevertheless, some background reading to explore the subjects addressed in SIR-CED might prove useful, so here goes: 1. NASA's Strategic Plan for Education: A Strategy for Change 1993-1998. Available from: NASA Office of Human Resources and Education, F National Aeronautics and Space Administration Washington, D.C. 20546 Phone: (202) 453 2500 Fax: (202) 755 4574 Contains information on NASA's education programs and addresses for NASA's Teacher Resource Centers across the US. 2. Introduction to the Physics and Techniques of Remote Sensing, by Dr. Charles Elachi. Available from: John Wiley and Sons, Publishers (1987) New York ISBN 0-471-84810-7 Contains a college-level introduction to the physics and techniques of remote sensing, including a good overview of imaging radar. 3. HOLT Physical Science, by William L. Ramsey, Clifford R. Phillips, Lucretia A. Gabriel, Frank M. Watenpaugh and James F. McGuirk. Available from: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers (1986) New York ISBN 0-03-001927-3 Contains a good introduction to many of the physical concepts which underlie remote sensing.