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Posted 10-22-99
CLEVELAND -- School children across Ohio now have the opportunity to go exploring with Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the R.M.S. Titanic wreck, through the Jason Project as Ohio becomes an official Jason state. Ballard will talk to local school teachers and students about his next adventure about oceans and space -- "Jason XI: Going to the Extremes" -- during a video conference from 2:15-3 p.m. Wednesday, October 27. The conference will be broadcast from Case Western Reserve University.
Students from the Cleveland School of the Arts, Metro Catholic Parish School, and Kinsner Elementary School in Strongsville will participate and ask Ballard questions during the conference that will be broadcast throughout the state via Ohio Schoolnet.
During the conference to introduce the Jason Project to the Ohio schools, former alternate payload specialist astronaut Dave Matthiesen, a CWRU assistant professor of material sciences, will demonstrate a space experiment. Representatives from the Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati will illustrate science from the ocean.
CWRU's Center for Science and Mathematics Education in the College of Arts and Sciences is the official Cleveland-area sponsor of Jason, and one of four sites throughout the state that trains teachers and airs the culminating multimedia telepresence broadcasts of the year-long science curriculum. Last year, CWRU hosted more than 2,200 children for Jason's 10th expedition, called a "Wet and Wild Adventure" to the Peruvian rainforest. This year's broadcasts will run from February 28 through March 10.
Teacher training for the Jason Project will take place at CWRU on two Saturdays, November 6 and December 4. For training information, contact Kathy Kwiatkowski, assistant director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at 216-368-5075.
Ballard founded the Jason program after he discovered the Titanic and school children sent 16,000 letters, tied up telephone lines, and made trips to his research base at Woodshole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts in an effort to meet the explorer and learn more about his explorations.
He has captured their enthusiasm for adventure through his science program which has taken school children to remote locations via sophisticated technologies over the past 10 years. Ballard's 11th adventure will concentrate on space and oceans with activities focused on NASA's Houston Space Center's international space station and on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's underwater Aquarius Lab in Florida.
Barbara Zimmerman, a sixth-grade teacher from Kinsner Elementary School in Strongsville, was chosen from a national pool of teachers to become a teacher argonaut and work with student argonauts on research projects during the broadcasts in February and March. An accomplished diver, she will conduct science experiments on the underwater coral reefs at the Aquarius Lab during one week of the Jason broadcast. She also will be present at the video conference with some of her students.
The Cleveland Jason Project has the support of East Ohio Gas/CNG Foundation, the Jennings Foundation and the Ohio Space Grant Consortium.
For more information on the Jason Project video conference, contact Robert Sanders at the Claremont County Educational Service Center at 513-735-8326, or e-mail him at sanders_r@nccanet.org.
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