The Landsat Program - Formal Education
Formal Education
Welcome, teachers and faculty!
Here you will find links to resources specifically for classroom education, grades K-14.
Landsat supports a fundamentally spatial approach to learning and thinking about the world. Spatial thinking is embedded in a multitude of disciplines, from natural resources management to disaster preparedness, disease epidemic prevention, and urban planning.
Using Landsat data and imagery as a basis, students can explore the water cycle, the carbon cycle, urbanization, deforestation, biological diversity, invasive species, fire, and more. National science, mathematics, and geography standards are explicitly addressed in the classroom activities available from this page.
Discover classroom activities that use Landsat. To help you find the activity that is right for you, we have created an activity matrix that lets you choose activities based on grade-level, product description, and activity keywords.
Current Projects
Integrated Geospatial Education & Technology Training (iGETT)
- iGETT (external link) is helping to meet workforce demands for geospatial technologists by enabling two-year colleges to expand existing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) programs to incorporate a wide range of remote sensing applications. Funded by the National Science Foundation, iGETT has worked with forty faculty members who currently teach GIS at two-year colleges across the country. One cohort joined the project in June, 2007 and will continue until May 2009. A second cohort participates from May 2008 until April 2010. For each group, the first year focuses on geospatial training and development of curriculum materials, the second on course enhancement, program development, and community outreach to prospective students and employers.
Upper Delaware Watershed Project
- Expanding urban and suburban populations are encroaching on the Upper Delaware Watershed. Over the last decade the population of the watershed has grown by more than 10%. Using both historical and current Landsat data, researchers are assessing the impact of this growth. Meanwhile, teachers from this region are learning how to use Landsat data and other geospatial resources as teaching tools in their classrooms.
Salish-Kootenai Tribal College Internships
In response to a proposal from the Salish-Kootenai Tribal College (SKC), the Landsat program began hosting student interns from the SKC in summer of 2001. This project is an effort to assist the students to learning how to use geospatial technology to address land management concerns on the reservation. The program has changed over the years, as both the college and Landsat staff learned about each other’s needs and strengths.
The program now includes a five-week intensive internship at Goddard for students working on reservation-based research with Landsat science mentors. Students also receive training on geospatial tools, courses that have been unavailable to them at their Tribal College. The close working relationship established during these internships encourages students to pursue their interests in geospatial analysis, while exposing them to the breadth of research that is accomplished with these tools. The students each prepare and present an end of summer synopsis of their experience. The program has proven successful, with well over half of the participants currently using geospatial technology in their work.
+ Student projects from summer 2005
Under Development
Teacher Professional Development Training Package
A complete package, with agenda and all materials needed for giving a four-hour teacher workshop on remote sensing and education with Landsat will be available as a NASA-approved product in 2009.
