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Project Progress

About 120 K-12 teachers and education majors celebrated the 50th anniversary of exo/astrobiology at Montana State University’s second-annual Teacher Resource Fair on Oct. 13, 2010. Co-sponsored by the Astrobiology Biogeocatalysis Research Center, the fair is designed to connect educators with university outreach and education resources. To celebrate the 50th anniversary, the first 50 attendees received a “NASA AstroPack” of classroom resources related to astrobiology and NASA missions. The event also featured a giant astrobiology birthday cake.
ABRC outreach staff showed teachers a classroom activity on how to make a comet and distributed astrobiology posters and heat-sensitive pencils that help students understand Yellowstone extremophiles.
Those in attendance included elementary, middle and high school teachers from throughout Montana, as well as administrators, curriculum developers and Montana Office of Public Instruction staff. Also attending were 20 teachers visiting the U.S. through a State Department exchange program who received resources to take back to their classrooms in Argentina, Bulgaria, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Russia, Senegal and Ukraine.
Eighteen other MSU departments participated, including ABRC’s co-sponsors, MSU Extended University and Montana NSF EPSCoR, as well as Montana Space Grant Consortium and the Space Public Outreach Team (SPOT). Departments shared DVDs, lesson plans and information about graduate programs, door rpizes.
To learn more about the Teacher Resource Fair 2010, visit http://eu.montana.edu/TRF/