COOPERATION KEY TO MISSION : STUDENTS USE NASA-SPEAK TO RUN CROSS-COUNTRY VENTURE.Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer The fate of a raw egg hung in the balance. Communicating on computers using the space-age vocabulary for National Aeronautics and Space Administration National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), civilian agency of the U.S. federal government with the mission of conducting research and developing operational programs in the areas of space exploration, artificial satellites (see satellite, artificial), missions, students from two Thousand Oaks schools worked with counterparts in Maine and Hawaii to move eggs through obstacle courses set up in their respective classrooms. The cooperative experiment, run on a national computer network last month, earned praise at the National Science Teachers Association in St. Louis this past weekend. The teachers behind the experiment, led by Craig Fox of Redwood Intermediate School and Don Goetzinger of Conejo Valley High School, were chosen to make presentations to their teaching peers. ``Traditionally, labs are just sort of a recipe-type deal. Here, we're trying to give students something brand new. They're really on their own,'' Fox said. ``They find out there's a lot of different ways of solving a problem. Cooperation and trial and error is a way of solving these problems.'' Inspired by the movie portraying the struggle to return the Apollo 13 crew to Earth after an aborted lunar landing, Fox and Goetzinger developed the experiment as a cooperative lab for their students. They brought in the teachers from East Holden, Maine, and Kailua, Hawaii, to give the experiment a sense of distance comparable to what the astronauts and flight controllers faced some 26 years ago. ``That was the first time that we really utilized the computer beyond pen pal kinds of letters,'' said Iris Clyne, who linked her students from Hawaii into the experiment. The class in Hawaii was paired with the class from Conejo Valley High, which is a continuation campus. The Redwood class was paired with the class in Maine. Students learned the terminology and acronyms used during the Apollo 13 mission. Communicating on the national computer network simulated the gap between the Houston-based flight controllers and the astronauts hovering 200,000 miles from the Earth and less than a day from the moon. ``The terminology made it really more fun. They had to act like astronauts and really go through this language,'' Clyne noted. The object was to use tools to move the egg, representing a radioactive fuel cell, from the floor to a table and through a maze. The task became more difficult as each tool was discarded. ``They learn how to cooperate and use proper telecommunication procedure,'' Fox said. ``We were actually racing each other to see who could get through the obstacle course first,'' he noted. ``It was really kind of a realistic feeling.'' The team from Hawaii and Conejo Valley High broke its first egg and then moved the second egg through the obstacle course in 54 minutes, about four minutes ahead of the team from Maine and Redwood. NASA-SPEAK Here are NASA-approved acronyms used by students from Redwood Intermediate and Conejo Valley High schools to communicate with peers in Maine and Hawaii, respectively, in a recent science experiment. Instructions: FCEL - fuel cell extraction lift. CMMT CMMT Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (University of British Columbia, Canada) - contorted mastic maze and tunnel. TTT "Thought that too." See digispeak. - table to table traverse. HAAR - high angle approach ramp. BLT 1. BLT - /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ Synonym for blit. This is the original form of blit and the ancestor of bitblt. It refers to any large bit-field copy or move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operation done on pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS and - balanced literary traverse. HCBL HCBL Health Center for Better Living (sells alternative health care products) - hundred centimeter balanced lever. ECCA ECCA European Cable Communication Association ECCA East Caribbean Currency Authority ECCA English Community Association (UK) ECCA Electromagnetically Coupled Curl Antenna ECCA European Cable Communications Association - electric circuit configuration apparatus. Tools: PTT (1) (Postal, Telegraph & Telephone) The governmental agency responsible for combined postal, telegraph and telephone services in many European countries. (2) See push-to-talk. PTT - Post, Telephone and Telegraph administration - paper towel tube. MLS See multilevel security. - meter length string. MLMT MLMT Major League of Monster Trucks - meter length masking tape. NP - new pencil. PS - plastic spoon. PC - paper cup. SS - soda straw. TTLC TTLC Total Threshold Limits Concentration TTLC Top Tier Local Corporate - twin two liter caps. PNP - plain notebook paper. FCLM - first class leveraged manipulator (scissors scissors Cutting instrument or tool consisting of a pair of opposed metal blades that meet and cut when the handles at their ends are brought together. Modern scissors are of two types: the more usual pivoted blades have a rivet or screw connection between the cutting ends ). CAPTION(S): Photo, Box Photo: (color) Craig Fox helped set up a linked experi ment. Michael Owen Baker/Daily News Box: NASA-SPEAK (see text) |
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