49
Chapter 4
NASATalk as a Discovery
Learning Space:
Self-Discovery Learning Opportunities1
Debra C. Burkey Piecka
Wheeling Jesuit University, USA
Laurie Ruberg
Wheeling Jesuit University, USA
Christopher Ruckman
Wheeling Jesuit University, USA
Dynae Fullwood
NASA Johnson Space Center, USA
ABSTRACT
The NASATalk online collaborative (www.nasatalk.com) gives educators a virtual place to talk about
the many opportunities available from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASATalk participants include K-16 educators, NASA-affiliated educators’ support staff, and others
interested in advancing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. This chapter
examines the self-discovery learning opportunities afforded by NASATalk for a three-day professional
development workshop from the perspectives of the NASATalk team members, two NASA Aerospace
Education Services Project specialists, and the workshop participants. For the conference, NASATalk
hosted a public collaborative named the NASA STEM Educators Workshop as well as several blogs.
The analysis discusses how various needs are met for orientation and entry, learner decision making,
individuated learning, intercommunications and collaboration, and original discovery in the NASATalk
content collaborative. A professional virtual community emerges where educators gathered onsite to
receive instruction, but they turned to NASATalk to share their ideas and experiences by posting articles,
blogs, comments, multimedia, links, and other educational resources.
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-320-1.ch004
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
NASATalk as a Discovery Learning Space
INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes a model of the NASATalk
online content collaborative. NASATalk is a Web
2.0 site where educators can come to share ideas,
suggestions, success stories, and even frustrations
about using National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) resources to enhance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) teaching and learning. While NASA provides hundreds of educational outreach resources
related to aeronautics and flight, ecosystems,
forces and motion, life sciences, engineering
design, the solar system, the Moon, and weather
and climate, these resources can be difficult to
locate and often need some adaptation to fit the
needs of the educator.
NASATALK BACKGROUND
AND MILESTONES
The NASATalk online collaborative (www.nasatalk.com) gives educators a virtual place to talk
about the many opportunities available from the
space agency. As a collaborative, the site invites
teachers, parents, or informal educators such as
Scout or 4-H leaders, and NASA-affiliated educators to participate, whether communicating with
other educators, reading blogs from fellow teachers and educational researchers, or even creating
their own blog. The vibrant site thrives through
the contributions of its participants.
As a content collaborative, NASATalk serves
as a forum for discussions about educator experiences using NASA educational resources. The
open source Joomla-based website provides a
professional virtual community of practice for
educators using and/or inquiring about NASA
educational resources for their K-16 STEM educational settings. NASATalk participants include
K-16 educators, NASA-affiliated educators’
support staff, STEM content experts, and others
interested in advancing STEM education.
50
NASATalk is designed and managed by the
NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future at
the Center for Educational Technologies (CET)
at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV.
The idea for NASATalk grew out of a 2006
Classroom of the Future™ educational technologies study that profiled effective use of new tools
to support STEM learning, with primary focus
on NASA science and technology innovators
(Ruberg, Calinger, & Howard, 2009). As a result
of the guidelines for best practice that resulted
from the study, NASA wanted to test a web-based
collaborative where educators could discuss how
they use NASA resources in their classroom along
with what works and what doesn’t. Development
for the virtual community, originally called the
EdTech Collaborative, began in 2007. The EdTech
Collaborative site debuted in 2008.
In October 2009 the Classroom of the Future
changed the EdTech Collaborative site name
and Joomla-based presentation to NASATalk to
make its focus clearer to the target audience. The
NASATalk name more clearly implies the intent
of the virtual community—a place to discuss
educational resources related to NASA STEM
materials. NASATalk goals align with its Classroom of the Future project proposal.
NASATalk System
Joomla is a free content management system that
serves as the core software backbone of NASATalk. It is written in PHP and utilizes MySql for
data management. Websites created with Joomla
have a good amount of flexibility. The source code
is open and may be modified by developers to fit
their specific needs.
Presently, the NASATalk website is running
Joomla Core version 1.5.20 along with Mighty
Extensions, a third party advanced management
system to manage users, content, subscriptions,
etc. Plugins for the site include the NASA and
NASA Earth Observatory Images of the Day and
Tweetboard. NASATalk also has a development
server.
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