JASON VI: Island Earth

Content Standards

Content standards for the JASON Project include but are not limited to: (A) performance standards; (B) knowledge standards; (C) standards relating to positive student attitudes toward the nature of science, technology, and mathematics and a broad understanding of the interrelationships between science, technology and society.

Implementation of Standards:

A. Performance Standards
Performance standards allow the student to show competence by performing some skill, operation, process, or action.

The JASON Foundation for Education has selected performance standards that can be easily demonstrated during a research expedition but are also basic to everyday life -- inquiry standards such as problem solving; processing standards such as observation, classification, seriation, measurement, inference, prediction, hypothesis, control of variables, interpretation, modeling, manipulation, experimentation; and general social standards relating to communication, presentation and team-building.

B. Knowledge Standards
A base of knowledge allows the student to ask and answer a broad range of questions. The JASON Foundation for Education incorporates a wide range of themes and disciplines in its programs and materials. Themes include diversity, change (including adaptation), continuity, and interaction; relationships (including stewardship); organization; limitation; life; energy; and space, time and matter. Disciplines include the life and physical sciences, technological and engineering sciences, mathematics, humanities and the arts.

C. Attitudes
The JASON Foundation for Education stimulates enthusiasm toward science, mathematics, and technology (as well as toward other disciplines) through engaging programs and materials that give the student the experience of research and exploration while also caring for the environment. As the student's understanding and appreciation grows, he or she will master concepts such as acceptance of milestones; assumptions and misconceptions; accepted rules; varieties of methods; creative enterprise; objectivity; accuracy; thoroughness; perseverance; due caution; curiosity; and acceptable risk.

As with most educational initiatives and frameworks, the JASON Project's key learning outcomes strongly emphasize encouraging an appreciation for the political, social, and cultural implications of scientific and technological advances. JASON Projects allow students to engage in scientific discovery and exploration through the use of advanced communication, robotics, and other engineering technology. Demonstrating the effects of science and technology on society to students first-hand encourages them not only to appreciate these research areas, but also to want to participate in them.

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Gene Carl Feldman (gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov) (301) 286-9428
Todd Carlo Viola, JASON Foundation for Education (todd@jason.org)