March 27, 2012

PARTNER SCHOOL SCIENCE PROGRAM CONNECTS TURKEY TO EUROPE

Space Camp Turkey's videoconference teaching methodology used in the "Partner School Science Program" will now connect schools in Europe and Turkey. Before, only schools in Turkey and the United States were connected via NASA's Distant Learning Network.

The first participants of the videoconference with Europe were School4Child school in Poland and Denizli Doga College in Turkey. The students were introduced to each other at the first videoconference, held on February 22. The second videoconference was organized on March 7 to share information about mission patches, which are designed before space flights.

The third videoconference, held on March 26h, connected both schools to Space Camp Turkey simultaneously. Students shared their mission patch designs they prepared using NASA’s educational materials and. Space Camp Turkey counselors also explained techniques of design. The students will continue their videoconference education sessions with the subject: “Modern Rocket Sciences."

GFTSE Programs Manager, Tolga Yildirim, said up until now PSSP videoconferencing had only paired American schools with Turkish schools. “We have been doing the videoconference education project with the American schools for nine years to establish friendships between students from different cultures. We have had about 70 videoconference calls with NASA. For the first time this year, we paired a Turkish school with a school in Europe, which means that we’re expanding our project into Europe. We hope to welcome students of both schools together with the students from other schools in the Partner School Science Program in our E-Pal Week on July 1 – 7” remarked Yildirim.

Space Camp Turkey, Aegean Free Zone, 35410, Gaziemir-Izmir/Turkey