18 Nov 2016

Educators examined moon and meteorite samples at a workshop held by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center's Office of Education Aug. 20 at the AERO Institute in Palmdale, California.
The Lunar and Meteorite Disk Certification workshop taught educators to identify features such as accretion, differentiation, cratering and volcanism in moon and meteorite samples encased in clear acrylic disks.

The samples included lunar samples recovered by NASA astronauts during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Earning a NASA certification from the workshop, the participants can now borrow the disks as educational tools for their own classrooms.
The 13 regional educators gathered in the workshop to learn about the samples from Armstrong Education Specialist Barbie Buckner, who was supported by Sondra Geddes, Armstrong's Education Resource Center manager and Education Specialist Brandon Rodriguez from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“The passion of the presenters to provide a quality science curriculum using lunar artifacts made this an excellent and timely professional development workshop,” said Dawna Tully, an elementary school teacher from Pasadena in California.

Image: An acrylic disk embedded with lunar samples sits under a microscope.