Those of us in the northern hemisphere are in the depths of the longest, darkest nights. If not for the Oregon winter clouds, these longs nights would be perfect for star gazing. I did enjoy a rare glimpse of the stars earlier this month with my oldest son before taking him to water polo practice one night.

I asked him what would be the coolest thing about being able to travel into space.  As almost every mom knows, car rides can lead to some of the richest conversations with teens, so we talked for several miles about exploration and discovery, the new frontier, possible life on other planets, and the incomprehensible notion of infinity.

I told him about a project ISTE’s working on with NASA about space weather and something called the “magnetosphere.”  He wanted to know more. I told him I’m just learning about magnetic space now but will know more by mid-March!

By mid-March, ISTE will be in the throes of an exciting project with NASA.  Right now, we’re looking for 25 teachers to join our cyber café learning laboratory and collaboratively create learning and educational artifacts that teachers or students can use to gain a deeper understanding of NASA’s 2014 Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. 

Cyber café activities will be facilitated by Pennsylvania physics teacher, longtime space enthusiast, and ISTE board member, Ben Smith. 

On the NASA side, we’ll be working with former math teacher Troy Cline as well as other NASA scientists and engineers to pioneer the first educational artifacts for the 2014 NASA mission. 

Our 25 teacher participants will lead efforts into this new frontier. They’ll discover new concepts, work with others to explore and create artifacts for teaching these concepts, and break new ground in the materials created for students.

Here’s more information about how to apply for the ISTE – NASA Learning Laboratory: Magnetic Space Project.

Applications are due by January 8, 2012. We’re looking for

• 25 middle and high school teachers who teach in any content area
• Are available between February 6 and March 16, 2012 to work collaboratively with NASA, ISTE, and other teachers
• Have an interest in space and NASA
• Have experience and interest in using social networking and social media tools.

Who knows?  Maybe these artifacts will last well into posterity – if not infinity!

Carolyn Sykora is a senior project manager for ISTE. In August she wrote for the blog about another exciting ISTE STEM project, computational thinking.