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RESEARCH

2007-2008

Math Sprint Team

Faculty Mentor Dr. D. Johnson

Full Report in PDF Format

Power Point

Abstract

The Effect of Math Sprint Competition in Student Achievement on SOL Mathematics Tests at Camelot Elementary School

Abstract

Given Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) (1995) mandates, Virginia’s elementary teachers and school leaders utilized research for teaching methods that encouraged gains on the end of course mathematics tests. The relationship between teacher motivation methods and student achievement on Virginia’s End of Course SOL Test for elementary deserves investigation. Virginia’s elementary students in grades three, four and five must maintain an annual pass rate to meet Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) as recommended by the national “No Child Left Behind Act” of 2001. Camelot Elementary School is a Title I school housing high concentrations of minority students who normally achieve lower test score gains than students in other schools. Camelot has a student population receiving at least seventy percent free and reduced lunch nested in a low middle class neighborhood in Chesapeake, Virginia.
This research was based on school effectiveness by developing and testing hypotheses about the specific relationships between student competition and state wide testing results in elementary mathematics in grades three and five at Camelot Elementary School in Chesapeake, Virginia. The study compiled data from the “Math Sprint Competition”, a series of student group related reviews of state released test items in a math test relay format. Research focused on methods for motivating an experimental group of students motivated by the use of a math sprint competition from 2005 to 2007 versus a control group of elementary students in mathematics for grades three and five from 2002 to 2004. Student learning activities were compared from teaching methods that included: direct instruction, problem-based learning, technology aided instruction, cooperative learning, manipulative, models, and multiple representations, communication, and study skills.
A group of twenty-four elementary teachers from Camelot Elementary School participated in this research to ascertain how frequently they used research-based teaching methods and determined the influence of teaching methods on their students’ achievement. A multiple regression analysis was used to show results from a 40-item state wide test for each grade level. Individual Pearson Product Moment Correlations were conducted to determine which variables possess strong and statistically significant relationships. This analysis determined if gains on the end of the year SOL scores were a result of an impact of the series of math sprint competitions used as motivators before each benchmark assessment leading to the SOL tests in 3rd and 5th grade mathematics.

Summer 2007

Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers Team

Faculty Mentor: Dollie M. McCown

NASA Langley Aeronautics Research Summer Scholar

Full Report in PDF Format

Power Point

Abstract

Enhancing the knowledge of the community about the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) through outreach programs and workshop participation; reaching the youth, home school parents and their students.
This summer, as a Langley Aeronautics Research Summer Scholar (LARSS), I was given the assignment of setting up outreach programs in the community where I would present NASA information and opportunities; providing different options in advancing in the NASA arena.
The most rewarding method of reaching out to the community was through setting up site visitations and presenting NASA information in a fun and exciting way. To be more precise, a point of contact was made to all site supervisors and staff members of different community centers and summer camp programs to arrange a time to come out and present the NASA information to the summer camp students and staff. After doing so, there were meetings held with my supervisor, Dollie M. McCown and Aerospace Education Specialists Rudo Kashiri and Dynae Fullwood to analyze beneficial activities to implement during the presentations.
Furthermore, materials had to be collected including NASA trinkets that would be given at the end of each presentation to leave a lasting impression on the audience. In order for this to become possible, I had to advance in networking with other NASA employees to locate the things that I needed to be successful. Kimberly Land played a major role in assisting me with all NASA valuable, fun and exciting materials.
Not only did I go out into the community and present information about NASA, I had the opportunity to present the problem of the day at the National Institute of Aerospace workshop. This really excited and pleased me to be given such a rewarding task that will be a great asset for my future career in teaching. The problem of the day was to have the different teams design a robotic arm using the craft materials given and have them perform the task of picking up a rubber toy astronaut and dropping it into a cup symbolizing a cargo bank. This was a very instrumental task because this provided an idea of one of Barbara Morgan’s task that she will be performing on the STS 118.
The overall outcome of this project was that information about NASA was presented to the community in a way that they would want to engage in NASA activities and become a part of the NASA team. Everything I expected to happen happened. There were no real difficulties faced; the majority of the activities designed went according to plan. All of the students that were a part of the informal outreach programs really enjoyed themselves and left with a broader mindset about NASA. Mission Accomplished!
This projects contributed to NASA’s missions and goals by revealing past, present and future information and allowing the community, particularly the children to analyze why NASA does what it does and how they can better each mission when they get older. I found that there were a lot of potential scientists, engineers, mathematicians and educators that could contribute a lot to NASA’s mission especially space exploration.

2006-2007

Antarctic Temperature Mapping Team

Mentor: Malcom LeCompte, Ph.D

Full Report in PDF Format

Power Point

Abstract

Firn is compacted, near-surface snow persisting longer than one season but not yet compressed into glacial ice. Knowledge of firn surface temperature (TS) trends across the Antarctic ice sheet is useful for documenting and quantifying change and providing a temporal and spatial context for research during the Antarctic International Polar Year (IPY). Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) provide episodic near-surface temperature (TAWS, ≈ TS) trends at a limited number of sites on the Antarctic continent while satellite passive microwave radiometers aboard the Defense Meteorology Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) obtain a nearly continuous daily record of surface brightness temperature (TB) across the entire continent. To a good approximation, TB is equal to the product of the surface emissivity (ε) with its actual temperature, TAWS.
The ratio of spatially and temporally coincident TB and TAWS yields an estimate of ε at a specific time and place and can be used to extrapolate TS trends across temporal and spatial gaps in the limited AWS record. The spatial and temporal variability of firn emissivity is not well understood but known to be a much less variable than daily TS. Tabulating continuous daily ratios of TB / TAWS yields a firn ε trend, from which TS data gaps can be filled from TB data or vice versa.
The first step in calculating emissivity trends from satellite and in-situ measurements was to compile a record of TAWS across the region of interest. The 2006-7 Antarctic Temperature Mapping team compiled extensive records of TAWS from selected stations on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) bordering an interior region without AWS coverage. Daily average TAWS records for the AWS sites were obtained from the AWS Project data archive at the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC). The stations whose temperature records are included in this compilation are: Brianna (1994-1997), Byrd (1981-99), Elizabeth (1996-99), Erin (1996-99), Patrick (1986-91), Ski Hi (1994-98), Swithenbank (1998-99), and Theresa (1994-99). The AWS temperature data itself constitutes an important record of the
WAIS climate since 1980, and is worthy of closer examination before addressing the project's second phase: tabulating SSM/I TB observations and calculating associated emissivity trends using TAWS values. For each AWS, a seasonal surface temperature average was determined and compared with those derived for the opposite season and with each other. In addition, for the sites with longer operating records; data from the first half of its operational life was compared with data recorded during its second half. These same trends were used to deduce firn emissivity. As a preliminary step to this next activity, ε trends at Ski Hi AWS site were derived from archived TAWS data coincident daily TB observations. Daily SSM/I values of TB for the Ski Hi site were obtained from Dr. Chris Shuman at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Future work will use SSM/I TB data to establish continuous emissivity and TS trends at other AWS and between spatial and temporal data gaps. This work is thus a preliminary step to deriving surface temperature trends across the entire Antarctic ice sheet over the last 28 years.

Summer 2006

Data/Visualization Team

Mentors: Dr. Raj Chaudhury & Dr. Lin Chambers

NASA SPHERE Summer 2006 - Christopher Newport University (CNU)

Full Report in PDF Format


Powerpoint

Abstract

This summer the Data/Visualization Team was responsible for creating a google map of local and remote GLOBE sites and their data on environmental phenomena that are linked using Google Maps and GPS (Global Positioning Service). Also the team created a walking tour of CNU and the Shenandoah Valley. The LAS stores satellite data on cloud coverage, surface Temperature, tropospheric ozone and other parameters, which is monitored by ground stations. This information will be linked to the google map to display the climate factors of each specific area. This information is useful for everyone, it makes it easy to identify geographical locations and their associated data from both satellite and ground stations.

2005-2006

Estimating Firn Emissivity, from 1994 to 1998

Mentor: Malcom LeCompte, Ph.D

Full Report in PDF Format

Abstract

Estimating Firn Emissivity, from 1994 to1998, at the Ski Hi Automatic Weather Station on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Using Passive Microwave Data
Firn is the compacted snow layer that has remained at or near the surface of an ice sheet for longer than one season but has not yet compressed into glacial ice. Knowledge of firn surface temperature trends across the Antarctic Ice Sheet is useful for documenting and quantifying change and for providing a temporal and spatial context for Antarctic research performed during the upcoming International Polar Year (IPY). The spatial and temporal variability of firn emissivity and the factors that control it are not currently well known although satellite passive microwave radiometer data has been proven to be useful to obtain reasonable surface temperature trend estimates across limited temporal and spatial gaps in AWS coverage. Over the last decade, techniques using passive microwave data have been pioneered by a number of investigators; including Jezek et al., (1993) and. Shuman et al., (1995).
In collaboration with Dr. Christopher Shuman, at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Cryospheric Sciences Branch, the 2005-2006 Polar Science Research Team compared archived surface temperature data from an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with brightness temperature data collected by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) aboard the Defense Meteorology Satellite Program (DMSP) polar orbiting meteorology satellite series. The ratio of passive microwave brightness temperature and AWS in-situ near surface temperature provides the firn emissivity estimate necessary to extrapolate surface temperature trends across temporal and spatial gaps in AWS coverage. This relationship is generally known as the ‘Rayleigh-Jeans Approximation’ (Hall and Martinec 1985)
As ‘ground truth’ data for our study, AWS temperatures at 3 hourly intervals for the “Ski Hi” AWS site (75º South Latitude, 71 º West Longitude) in West Antarctica were obtained via internet file transfer from the AWS Project data archive at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The passive microwave time series of daily DMSP SSM/I brightness temperatures, geographically and temporally overlapping the Ski Hi site were obtained via Internet ftp file transfer from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. These 25x25 km remote sensing data were tabulated in a Microsoft EXCEL spread sheet to derive daily average surface temperatures at Ski Hi AWS location. The daily ratio of the SSM/I brightness temperature to the AWS surface temperature provided an emissivity trend from which to extrapolate surface temperatures The Ski Hi AWS operated from late February 1994 until late November 1998. The team developed mathematical/statistical techniques to robustly estimate the surface emissivity trend over this time period, and use it to obtain estimates of surface temperature during data gaps in the AWS archive longer than one day. This work was the first step to deriving a surface temperature trend across the Antarctic ice sheet from 1987 through the present. Additional efforts may include assessing the previous passive microwave sensor (SMMR) that operated from 1978 to 1987 and also temperature retrievals from
IR sensors such as AVHRR and MODIS.

 

 

tcfields@mail.ecsu.edu