WHEELS (Workshops Helping Educators Explore and Leverage STEM) offers professional development opportunities and appropriate NASA education resources for the elementary and secondary education community. Professional development support can consist of half- or full-day workshops for in-service and/or pre-service teachers and has been designed to align with state and national education goals. All workshops are customized for each group's needs.

WHEELS teaches current and future educators how to best leverage NASA's existing education materials developed by the Exploration Mission Directorate. These materials, utilizing the excitement of returning to the moon, provide activities in the physics, mathematics, technology education, and science classrooms. Once equipped, teachers can use these materials to expose students to critical and complex challenges related to the development of innovative solutions.

WHEELS Goals

AESP's goal is to maximize the use of NASA educational materials. Education Specialists may support the following types of activities based upon your regional interests and needs:

• In-class support by NASA
• In-classroom assistance in the initial implementation of WHEELS activities and materials as a follow up to the workshop
• Robots on the Road presentations
• Dynamic hands-on robotics will be brought into your classroom to excite your students about STEM careers
• Special events / Speaking engagements
  • NASA AESP Education Specialists may host an afternoon or evening event for teachers, students, or the general public to discuss NASA or demonstrate other NASA Education products

WHEELS Evaluation

If you attended a WHEELS sponsored Teacher Workshop, please complete the short evaluation survey. Thank you for helping us maintain and improve our programs!

Groups Involved with WHEELS

Exploration Experience - NASA's Exploration Experience offers several immersive stations that show visitors what it would be like to explore the Moon and beyond.

Robots on the Road - As the kick-off for the Robots on the Road program an AESP traveling specialist is participating in WHEELS events as well as delivering presentations to middle school students in the area demonstrating several unique robots built from Lego NXT kits.

AESP Specialists - Other specialists from NASA centers from across the country will also be participating in all of these events.

Questions about WHEELS

Contact Leah Bug, AESP WHEELS Coordinator at leahbug@psu.edu or 814-865-8397.

Where's WHEELS?

The table below lists the times, location, and contact person for all upcoming teacher professional development events presented by Tony Leavitt, NASA Aerospace Education Specialist. All workshops are open to K-12 teachers at no charge. Credit is available at all workshops. NOTE: Oregon and Idaho Space Grant Consortiums will reimburse teachers for the optional credit. Limited to the first ten teachers at each location who register and attend the class.

Lewis Clark State College - Lewiston, ID	November 16 & 17, 2009: 4:30 - 8:30pm (extra outside work for credit option) To register, contact Jack Peasley at jwpeasley@lcsc.edu

Below is a map of the up-coming destinations for WHEELS. Select the WHEELS link below the map to get more information about each event.

View WHEELS in a larger map