Linking climate change education through the integration of a kite-borne remote sensing system: linking climate change education and remote sensing

A majority of secondary science teachers are found to include the topic of climate change in their courses. However, teachers informally and sporadically discuss climate change and students rarely understand the underlying scientfc concepts. The project team developed an innovatve pedagogical approach, in which teachers and students learn climate change concepts by analyzing Natonal Aeronautcs and Space Administraton (NASA) global data collected through satellites and by imitatng the NASA data collecton process through NASA Airborne Earth Research Observaton Kites And Tethered Systems (AEROKATS), a kite-borne remote sensing system. Besides AEROKATS, other major components of this system include a web-collecton of NASA and remote sensing data and related educatonal resources, project-based learning for teacher professional development, teacher and student feld trips, iOS devices, smart feld data collector apps, portable weather statons, probeware, and a virtual teacher collaboratory supported with a GIS-enabled mapping portal. Three sets of research instruments, the NASA Long-Term Experience –Educator End of Event Survey, the Teacher End of Project Survey, and the pre-and-post-Investgatng Climate Change and Remote Sensing (ICCARS) project student exams, are adapted to study the pedagogical impacts of the NASA AEROKATS remote sensing system. These fndings confrm that climate change educaton is more efectve when both teachers and students actvely partcipate in authentc scientfc inquiry by collectng and analyzing remote sensing data, developing hypotheses, designing experiments, sharing fndings, and discussing results.


INTRODUCTION
"Climate change is occurring and is very likely caused by human actvites" (Natonal Research Council [NRC], 2012a, pp. 1). A strong possible consequence of climate change is to negatvely shape many aspects of life in the foreseeable future (NRC, 2011a). Therefore it is very important to engage formal and informal educaton to educate the public about those challenges climate change will bring, and to prepare current and future generatons to intelligently respond to those challenges (NRC, 2011b). In fact, a good number of science teachers (earth science and environmental science in partcular) are found to include discussions of climate change in their courses (Wise, 2010). However, the majority of them only informally and sporadically introduce the phenomena, causes and consequences of climate change. Science teachers are facing many challenges to There is an increasing volume of literature on how to broadly integrate climate change educaton in secondary schools. From the curriculum adopton viewpoint, the inclusion of climate change educaton in curricula is just as embedding any emerging subject in school educaton (NRC, 2011b;NRC 2012a). Six provisions that were identfed by Layton (1973) and Goodson (1985Goodson ( , 1987 should be included in school tme-tables in order to successfully embed an emerging subject in school curricula: teacher professional development, external examinatons, university partnerships, teacher material interests, subject characteristcs, and external consttuency. Five additonal themes have been proposed recently for acceptng environmental educaton in schools: "syllabi and teaching resources, central government leadership, informal curriculum, non-formal educaton, and emergent process" (Yueh, Cowie, Barker & Jones, 2010, pp. 267). These traditonal provisions and new additons are very relevant to promotng climate change educaton in schools.
Abundant recommendatons have also been made from the perspectves of learning strategies, such as, projectbased learning, authentc scientfc inquiry, place-based learning, and acton-oriented educaton. The concept of project-based learning (PBL) emerged more than half a century ago as a pedagogy, which proclaims that students could learn much beter through solving real-world problems (Thomas, 2000;Barron, 2003). PBL improves their problem-solving and collaboraton skills and increases students' motvaton to learn as well. As a result, PBL helps students achieve beter performance even with traditonal academic tests (Strobel & van Barneveld, 2009;Walker & Leary, 2009). The core of PBL is the integraton of real-world experience into school learning environments and, thus, is closely related to the concept of authentc scientfc inquiry (ASI). ASI promotes engaging students in a full range of scientfc practces as scientsts in the real world do. ASI helps students understand how knowledge develops, and gives them an appreciaton of the wide range of approaches that are used to investgate, model, and explain the world (Westerlund, Garcia & Koke, 2002;NRC, 2012b). Moreover, project-based scientfc inquiries could be made more efectve if they were conducted or implemented within existng power structures or social contexts (Wiener & Rivera, 2010). The consideraton of place-based approaches into project-based or inquiry-based instructons can improve students' achievement (Carleton-Hug & Hug, 2010;Wyner & Desalle, 2010;Gautreau & Binns, 2012).
The necessity for students' involvement in practces for climate change educaton or environmental educaton has been elevated to a higher level, acton-oriented educaton, in recent years. Climate change educaton as well as environmental educaton at schools has traditonally focused on conveying knowledge to students but not on transforming the knowledge into actons or actvites valuable to alleviatng the stresses caused by environmental polluton or climate change (Kilinc, Boyes & Stanisstreet 2011). Therefore, a project-based learning environment needs to have an acton-oriented approach in order to develop pro-environmental behaviors for both students and teachers (Kilinc, 2010;Dalelo, 2012). An acton in the context of environmental educaton frstly indicates a decision to do something good either alone or as a group (Dalelo, 2012). "It is a queston of a change in behavior or an atempt to infuence the conditons of life" (Jensen & Schnack, 2006, pp. 476). An acton, secondly, must have a targeted goal aiming at discovering feasible solutons to a problem that is being explored (Jensen & Schnack, 2006;Mogensen & Schnack, 2010;Dalelo, 2012 networks is an innovatve educatonal approach to break barriers for acceptng an emerging subject like climate change educaton and environmental educaton in schools and for sustaining the momentum (Khalifa & Sandholz, 2012). Promotng virtual cooperaton between governmental agencies, universites, schools and nongovernmental organizatons around the world is a sustainable approach to mitgate the negatve stresses caused by climate change and subsequent environmental impacts. One great example is the Global Learning and Observatons to Beneft the Environment (GLOBE®) program (n.d.), which is a worldwide hands-on, primary and secondary school-based science and educaton program (htp://www.globe.gov/). GLOBE promotes and supports students, teachers and scientsts to collaborate on inquiry-based investgatons of the environment and the Earth system working in close partnership with NASA, Natonal Oceanic and Atmospheric Administraton (NOAA) and Natonal Science Foundaton (NSF). The educatonal networking for climate change or environmental educaton could be local and regional (Glowinski & Bayrhuber, 2011). For example, the goal of school-based sustainability educaton programs in schools could align well with the sustainability awareness of student's parents and with the sustainability agendas of the communites where schools locate (Eilam & Trop, 2013). It is much more efectve to build local school-community networks to coordinate the sustainability eforts than each partner trying separately.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH
NASA's AEROKATS (Airborne Earth Research Observaton Kites And Tethered Systems), developed by NASA Aero-engineer, Geof Bland at Goddard Space Flight Center (GFSC) Wallops Flight Facility has been successfully used in an educatonal setng since 2004 by the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (Nagchaudhuri et al., 2005). The NASA funded Investgatng Climate Change and Remote Sensing (ICCARS) project began implementng the use of AEROKATS in 2010. This project represents the frst adopton of AEROKATS technology into a K-12 environment. In additon to adoptng remote sensing in K-12 setngs, the ICCARS project is defned by inclusion of acton-oriented educaton, authentc scientfc inquiry, project-based learning, place-based learning, and building learning communites through networks.
The ICCARS project design has four unique characteristcs: • A scalable remote sensing system, • Data-driven learning and visualizaton, • Integraton of technology and fun into project-based learning, • Engagement of a large number of students in place-based authentc inquiry.

A Scalable Remote Sensing System
Large and growing archives of orbital imagery of the earth's surface have been collected over the past 40 years (Xie, Sha & Bai, 2010). Remotely-sensed images have proven valuable for a wide variety of applicatons involving both historical and contemporary conditons of the earth surface, including ecological systems, land uses, and land covers (Shrivastava & Gebelein, 2007;French, Schmugge, Ritchie, Hsu, Jacob & Ogawa, 2008;Xie, Sha, Yu, Bai & Zhang, 2009a). Moreover, remote sensing data portray the earth from a local to global scale (Filchev & Stamenov, 2010). Therefore, satellite imagery is a valuable medium for children to learn about the nonsustainable uses of natural resources at diferent places and over diferent tmes on earth (Jahn, Haspel & Siegmund, 2010). For example, the pace, magnitude, and spatal reach of human alteratons of the Earth's land surface are unprecedented (Lambin et al., 2001). Changes in land-cover (i.e., biophysical atributes of the earth's surface) and land-use (i.e., human purpose or intent applied to these atributes) are among the most important (Turner, Clark, Kates, Richards, Mathews & Meyer, 1990;Lambin et al., 1999). Land-use and landcover changes are so pervasive that, when aggregated globally, they signifcantly afect key aspects of the functons of the Earth's systems. Land-use and land-cover changes directly impact biotc diversity worldwide (Sala et al., 2000); contribute to local and regional climate change (Chase, Pielke, Kitel, Nemani & Running, 1999) as well as to global climate warming (Houghton, Hackler & Lawrence, 1999); are the primary source of soil degradaton (Tolba & El-Kholy, 1992); and, by altering ecosystem services, afect the ability of biological systems to support human needs (Vitousek, Mooney, Lubchenco & Melillo, 1997). Such changes also determine, in part, the vulnerability of places and people to climatc, economic or socio-politcal perturbatons (Kasperson, Kasperson & Turner, 1995).
In contrast, the principle of remote sensing and the techniques of image interpretaton and processing are very Vol. 4(3), 2014, pp 122 abstract. Therefore, in order to provide a more authentc learning experience where students have fun while learning the complex concepts and techniques of remote sensing, the ICCARS project adopted AEROKATS technologies. The NASA AEROKATS program designs and develops custom airborne sensor systems (Aeropods), fted to a wide variety of scientfc and agricultural applicatons. Three of these systems were adapted to the ICCARS project: • a single visible-light camera system, or MonoCam Aeropod, for training and basic aerial photo interpretaton; • a two-camera imaging system, or TwinCam Aeropod, for collectng four-band (red, green, blue and near-infrared) images; and • an airborne portable weather staton, the Air-Column Profler, for collectng atmospheric data.
The primary instrument of concern in this paper is the TwinCam Aeropod, though classrooms made good use of the MonoCam and Air-Column Profler systems as well. A NASA Space-Act Agreement enabled students from two schools to design custom systems for specifc research projects.
Students fy an AEROKATS "mission" in the feld at an identfed site that is suitable for fying a large kite and instrument package safely ( Figure 1). A mission consists of a planning phase, fight and safety protocols, in-situ data collecton, the launch, fight and retrieval of an Aeropod, and the onboard data. Afer the mission, students analyze the data they collect. In the case of the TwinCam, students collect four-band, (R, G, B, NIR) imagery, and use a simplifed image processing applicaton, MultSpec (Purdue Research Foundaton, 2013), to interpret and process the AEROKATS imagery. This hands-on, authentc data collecton experience, models satellite-based remote sensing, which helps students gain a beter understanding of this process, as well as the applicaton of satellite imagery in the study of global climate change.

Figure 1. A composite photo of fying the Aeropods: Panel A -the kite; Panel B -the Aeropods; Panel C -the fying crew of students
The ICCARS eCollaboratory website includes links to many types of NASA data products and tools that are relevant to studying the efects of climate change. Examples include the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal

Data-Driven Learning and Visualizaton
The NASA data and remote sensing images are geo-spatal in nature and are best viewed and analyzed in geographic informaton systems (GIS). GIS has long been recognized as an interdisciplinary technology supportng high-level thinking and spatal reasoning (Bednarz & Audet, 1999;Drennon, 2005;NRC, 2006). "GIS is envisioned as an invaluable resource for use in extending a learner's understanding of geography as it allows for the visual illustraton and manipulaton of central concepts of the discipline" (Breetzke, Eksteen & Pretorius, 2011, pp. 148). GIS is well suited to conductng open-ended investgatons, visualizing complex real-world problems, and supportng multple modes of learning (Henry & Semple, 2012). From the data analysis point of view, GIS has fve salient features: • integratng data from multple sources into large data sets (Xie et al., 2009b); • serving as data mining visual and spatal aids (Hunter & Xie, 2001); • analyzing spatal paterns in data (Baty & Xie, 1994); • analyzing data from multdisciplinary perspectves (Hunter & Xie, 2001); and • easily connectng with the Internet and sharing data and related analyses with colleagues (Hunter & Xie, 2001;Xie et al., 2009b).
Therefore, a GIS-enabled ICCARS resource website linked with an ICCARS online collaboratory is an important portal.

Integraton of Technology and Fun into Project-Based Learning
Remote sensing, GIS, and global positoning system (GPS) are the three primary pillars of geospatal technology. Because the uses of geospatal technology are so widespread and diverse, the market is growing at an annual rate of almost 35%, with the commercial subsecton of the market expanding at the rate of 100% each year (U.S. Department of Labor -Employment & Training Administraton, 2010). Moreover, almost all enterprises are using the Internet to disseminate locaton-related (geographic) data in map forms using Web GIS (Green, 1997;Rohrer & Swing, 1997;Peng & Tsou, 2003). With the increasing popularity of global on-line mapping web applicatons (e.g. Google Maps, Microsof Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps, ArcGIS Online), Web GIS is part of "business exchange" and there is an ever-growing volume of literature and public partcipaton (Carver, 2001;Clark, Monk & Yool, 2007;Kulo & Bodzin, 2013).
In additon, the assembling and operaton of the AEROKATS remote sensing system involves the knowledge of aerodynamics, engineering and hands-on mechanical skill. The AEROKATS system also includes handheld feld data collecton sofware installed on an iPhone or iPad for entering "mission" related data such as launch site features, locaton data, launch team informaton, and atmospheric conditons (recorded by Kestrel weather staton). The iPhone or iPad enabled data collector also communicates with the ICCARS data server for downloading data to mobile device or uploading feld data to the server for sharing with teacher collaborators. It is worth pointng out that the fying of AEROKATS missions is a fun actvity, encouraging students to conduct feld observatons and engineering-like experiments. For many youths, a draw to science inquiry and engineering experiment could be simply a project that looks like fun (Boss, 2013). Flying a kite with a twincamera sensor for collectng color and infrared composite imagery with their peers is partcularly appealing to them. Not to menton that they can later use a sofware package to interpret the images they collect and to match with the images collected by satellites.

Engagement of a Large Number of Students in Place-Based Authentc Inquiry
A good porton of the NASA data collected for the ICCARS project, the learning materials provided to students and teachers, and the lesson units developed by teachers are focused on local communites. In partcular MODIS and AVHRR data products across the Great Lakes Basin from 1990 to present are compiled to support the studies of climate change on a regional scale. Landsat at 30-m spatal resoluton annually from 2000 to 2010 are processed to study Land-Use-Land-Cover changes along the Detroit River. Partcipatng teachers and students can use these image products with MutSpec to perform basic image analysis such as Normalized Diference Vegetaton Indices (NDVI) and classifcaton of dominant land uses or covers. The NDVI data can be used to compute biomass and predict yield (Xie et al., 2009a). Crop yields are afected by temperatures and In brief, the ICCARS project, implemented jointly by Wayne County Regional Educatonal Service Agency (RESA) and Eastern Michigan University (EMU) with a grant from NASA Ofce of Science Educaton, focused on experiences and actvites that support high school level instructon/learning in NASA-related STEM content and engage teachers and students in dialogue with NASA scientsts and peers in order to gain deeper insight into NASA STEM content. The ICCARS project was formally started in July, 2010 and successfully completed in April, 2013. The frst cohort (September, 2010-June, 2011), included 16 teacher partcipants and focused on development of the ICCARS model. In July, 2011, the full implementaton phase began and 42 additonal teacher partcipants were added. Teachers partcipated in ICCARS summer insttutes, feld AEROKATS fying missions, monthly webinars, and they actvely shared ideas in an ICCARS eLearning Collaboratory. Together, they created 26 instructonal modules with 66 fully developed lesson units using the ICCARS materials and NASA data in the context of climate change educaton (Table 1).

CONCLUSIONS 3.1 The ICCARS Project Outcome Analysis
The ICCARS project had a broad scope as was mentoned earlier. Therefore, this paper focuses atenton to the outcomes that were directly related to the ICCARS' unique features and the AEROKATS remote sensing system in partcular. The outcome assessment involved three types of evaluaton research approaches: • the NASA Educator End of Event Survey; • the ICCARS' Teacher End of Project Survey (the exit survey); and Vol. 4(3), 2014, pp 125 • the impact analysis of ICCARS curriculum integraton on students' performance.
The NASA Educator End of Event Surveys distnguish between long-term experience (> 2 days), and short-term experience (< 2 days) events, and are otherwise identcal.
The learning outcome was assessed by employing a repeated-measures design. A repeated-measures design is used when a pre-test and post-test is administered to the same group of learners over a defned period. According to Graveter and Wallnau (2004), the repeated-measures design is "especially well-suited for studying learning, development, or other changes that take place over tme" (pp. 355). All of the data was entered into IBM SPSS Statstcs version 21. The pre-test and post-test results were analyzed using the paired-samples t-test. All testng was two-tailed, with nominal alpha set at 0.05. In additon, an electronic survey was developed using the SurveyMonkey sofware (SurveyMonkey Inc., 2013). SurveyMonkey is a user-friendly sofware that permits one to analyze survey responses. Basic frequencies and percentages were generated for each completed survey.
The NASA Long-term and Short-term Experience-Educator End of Event Surveys, are required for all NASAfunded educatonal projects, and are monitored by the NASA Ofce of Educaton. The survey instruments were administered at various tmes throughout the course of the ICCARS project, which was funded for two-years, with a one-year no-cost extension. A total of 324 entries were retrieved from both surveys. Additonally, 30 teachers completed a Long-term Experience-Educator End of Event Survey at the end of the implementaton phase of the project. The combined survey results were reported in Table 2 and Table 3.    Table 4 revealed the content areas of the ICCARS partcipatng teachers. It was very clear that the majority (nearly 70%) of ICCARS partcipants were science teachers. Additonal subject areas represented by ICCARS teachers included Mathematcs, English, Social Studies, Library Sciences, and Technology. Moreover, the NASA long-term experience survey asked general refecton of teachers concerning the usefulness of the NASA experience and materials provided by from the NASA-funded project of ICCARS (Table 2 and Table 3). For the questons regarding the educatonal values of NASA content, resources, and experience (the frst fve questons), a majority of teachers (over 90%) either strongly agreed or agreed with the positve responses. Furthermore, a majority of teachers were positve about the alignment of climate change educaton with what they were teaching and the possible improvement of their teaching efectveness because of their NASA experience (Table 2 and Table 3: the sixth and seventh questons). Another multple-opton queston in the NASA educator experience survey asked what specifc actvites teachers planned to change or add to their teaching practces (Table 5). Clearly, a majority of respondents (70%) planned to use NASA/ICCARS web resources; a majority wanted to use the NASA/ICCARS subject maters (68%), technology resources (68%), and nearly half (48%), wanted printed materials, respectvely. Teachers completng the entre project responded even more favorably as shown in Table 6   The second outcome assessment instrument was the ICCARS' Teacher End of Project Survey (exit survey). The exit survey was designed to ask specifc questons concerning the unique features of the ICCARS project and to obtain the informaton needed to complete the project fnal report. In total, 40 questons were included in the exit survey and 30 teachers completed the survey. Two of the questons were closely ted with the research theme of this paper. The frst one is, "Which NASA resources, made known to you through the ICCARS project, have helped you beter understand the issues of global climate change (check all that apply)?" (Table 7). The resources most commonly cited by teachers (83.3%), were data analysis and visualizaton tools. Abundant evidences from NASA resources and the remote sensing images were equally important (76.7%) to help them understand the climate change issues. Social networking approaches (including the peer groups -70.0% and other mass-media, such as, podcasts, blogs or webinars -46.7%) were also notceable helpers. Furthermore, the feld data collecton and the understanding of scientfc concepts underlying climate change were identfed as useful helpers. The other queston was about the NASA AEROKATS remote sensing system, "How has fying NASA AEROKATS missions helped increase your students' interest in STEM learning (choose all that apply)?" (Table 7). This was also a multple-opton queston, which teachers could select as many optons as they deemed meaningful. In fact, fve schools could not organize students to fy the AEROKATS remote sensing system because of diferent reasons. As a result, the teachers from these schools chose the answer, N/A (not applicable). Nevertheless, the remaining teachers positvely responded to this queston (Table 8). The meaningful contributons of the AEROKATS remote sensing system to the increase of students' STEM interest included, 'out-door actvity', 'fun', 'hands-on science project', and 'collectng their own real world data'.   Pre-andpost ICCARS exam results were reported for sixteen schools, and included results for 526 students (Table 9). The post-ICCARS exam gains in four schools (164 students), exceeded 52%. (The t-test of one school and 11 students was > 0.05 and thus the change was not statstcally signifcant). The score changes in other six schools and for 171 students showed gains between 33% and 50%. Another way of looking at the post-ICCARS exam results was that the test scores in thirteen out of sixteen schools, and for 440 of 526 students, showed improvements that were statstcally signifcant.

Discussion
Embedding climate change educaton in school curricula is analogous to integratng an emerging subject into schools. Among the numerous provisions identfed by Layton (1973), Goodson (1985) and Yueh et al. (2010) Math and Science Center. As a result, the ICCARS project had the ideal university partnership and external consttuency.
The ICCARS project adapted many emerging processes in order to promote a broad acceptance of climate change educaton from teachers and students. A very important aspect of the project was integratng the kiteborne NASA AEROKATS remote sensing system at a local scale, with the satellite-based remote sensing at global and regional scales. These NASA data sources and experiences at multple scales enabled teachers and students to investgate climate change and its impacts from global issues to their backyard community concerns. The AEROKATS system also enabled teachers and students to implement "authentc science inquiry" to look into causes and consequences of climate change, and "place-based learning" to establish natural linkages between technologies and neighborhood stresses caused by climate change. In other words, the studies of climate change could occur in students' milieu (Hunter & Xie, 2001). As students partcipated in project actvites (i.e., learning remote sensing, and applying them to investgate climate change and its consequences), they enhanced their STEM learning by becoming community citzens. Thus the project provided an opportunity for students to use their own community as a platorm for learning. This was exactly consistent with the key idea promoted by the acton-oriented learning. The acton-oriented place-based learning was likely to enhance partcipants' self-efcacy, which may be an important ingredient in climate change literacy "through a connecton to a perceived ability to reduce a threat (Value-Belief Norm theory), or through locus of control (Environmental Citzenship Behavior Model)" (Monroe, 2003, pp. 122). In short, all three assessment tools confrmed that both teachers and students were beneftng from this emergent integraton of the mult-scaled remote sensing systems into climate change educaton. A similar efort and success was recently found in a European project, the web-based learning platorm, "Planet Acton -A SPOT Image Initatve: Are You Actve in Fightng Climate Change," (2013) an exemplary project educatng the youth for sustainable development from the viewpoint of remote sensing and the geosciences.
The second emergent process was to integrate data analysis and visualizaton in climate change educaton. Geographic informaton based educaton was more efectve when educators or students actvely partcipated in solving real-world challenges by developing hypotheses, designing experiments, collectng data, analyzing real-life data in visual forms, and discussing results. As the ICCARS Teacher End of Project Survey revealed, ICCARS' analysis and visualizaton tools were the number one NASA resource that helped teachers beter understand the issues of global climate change (Table 7). The graphic representatons of climate changes and the visualized paterns of ecological and environmental consequences of climate change from local to regional or even to global scales helped fll the knowledge gaps among teachers.
The third emergent process was to integrate technology and fun with the AEROKATS remote sensing system. The fying of the AEROKATS remote sensing system involved mechanical skills to assemble the Aeropod and kite system, teamwork skills to follow protocols and operate the system safely, data collecton and management skills to obtain in situ feld data (ground control points and reference data), computng skills of using image analysis sofware, and image processing skills of interpretng the images. Moreover, the AEROKATS fying was an outdoor actvity and hands-on authentc science project. Students responded well to the team projects that embedded STEM learning into fun actvites. The integraton of technology is very important to Wayne RESA's mission.
Wayne County is the most populous county in Michigan and includes the City of Detroit. Twenty high schools out of the 34 school districts in Wayne County did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the 2011-12 school year. Of those 20, 14 have more than 20% of their students from families living below poverty, with 6 exceeding a 50% poverty rate. (This is up from 2007 when (a) 19 school districts in Wayne County did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the school year, (b) only 10 of those 19 had more than 20% of their students from families living below poverty, and (c) only 2 of those 10 exceeded a 50% poverty rate.) Of these fourteen districts (US Census Bureau, 2013), ten have minority student populatons that exceed 35 percent (the minority populaton ranges from 35.3% to 99.7%). The ICCARS project took into consideraton the natonal goals to provide the naton with a technologically sophistcated workforce and to provide opportunites for young people that would atract them to and prepare them for careers in science, mathematcs, and engineering. The ICCARS experience confrmed that students from underserved communites had great potental and drive when it became clear to them that the learning materials were relevant and technological, and would increases job and career opportunites (van Eijck & Roth, 2007;Literat, 2013).
Another key efort of the ICCARS project was to provide teacher professional development and to develop syllabi and teaching resources in the context of climate change educaton. The content expectatons of Vol. 4(3), 2014, pp 131 instructon, knowledge gaps, and a lack of learning experiences for teachers identfed in the ICCARS project suggested that all science teachers would beneft from professional development focused on climate science, best practces in climate instructon, and peer communicaton. While the ICCARS project originally planned to develop 60 instructonal units, the ICCARS partcipatng teachers fnally developed 66 lesson units, using PBL methodology grounded in inquiry and student led investgatons, applying NASA image data and resources, and aligning with Michigan educatonal standards in earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematcs and social studies. These instructonal units were published online by the Wayne RESA web site (Modules and Units, 2013) (htp://www.resa.net/curriculum/curriculum/science/professionaldevelopment/climatechange/modules-and-units/) and are now serving as an important learning material for the disseminaton of the ICCARS project. As indicated by the NASA Long-Term Experience -Educator End of Event Survey, the use of web resources concerning NASA data and materials in the context of climate change educaton was the most widely favored practce that teachers were planning to adapt in classrooms (Table 5 and Table 6). It was also clear that the peer communicaton advocated through the ICCARS' e-Learning Collaboratory played a meaningful role to sustain the teachers' momentum of embedding climate change educaton in school curricula ( Table 7). The e-Learning Collaboratory (htp://www.iccarsproject.net/) included eight major elements: 'Climate Change Resources', 'Remote Sensing Resources', 'NASA AEROKATS', 'iOS Resources', 'ICCARS Modules and Units', 'ICCASR PLC', 'ICCARS Observaton Mapper (GIS enabled mapping toolbox)', and 'ICCARS Follow-Share-Interact (including, Facebook, Twiter, Picasser, and Blog). These elements together encouraged teachers to communicate with each other and thus facilitated the successful completon of the ICCARS project. More importantly, the e-Learning Collaboratory is stll alive, disseminatng the ICCARS learning materials and the NASA remote sensing experience to a broad spectrum of secondary teachers in Michigan.
A fnal note is that the concepts of remote sensing are comprehensive and the techniques of image processing are advanced. In additon, it usually takes a long learning curve to master basic skills of GIS-based data visualizaton and analysis. However, due to the scheduling constraint, the ICCARS project was not able to allocate sufcient tme for providing knowledge development in remote sensing principles and for skill training in image processing and GIS-based data analysis. A good number of teachers pointed out in the ICCARS exit survey that the technology training should be enhanced in future similar professional development opportunites.