"It's
kind of fun to do the impossible" (Walt Disney). This project
was pretty much an impossible dream that dedication and perseverance
made possible. Students at the Montessori School of Corona
built a realistic 3-D Mars globe and their own IRO spacecraft
with a tiny pinhole camera to take pictures of the planet. Their
project is directly related to the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter mission and the HiRISE (People's Camera) instrument.
A little
green guy, hunters and farmers... Children at the
Montessori School of Corona and Montessori Children's
House in Cypress created landscapes and built K'Nex
rovers but this version of MER REP has a bit of a twist.
Students in
kindergarten through 7th grade at Mesa Union Elementary
School in Somis, California, participated in the MER REP
project for the second year. They joined students
from Montessori School of Corona to share the project
with visitors to the JPL Open House on May 15-16, 2004.
Educators attended a workshop in July/August
2002, presented by Steven Dworetzky, to assist
in the development of curriculum for the MER REP project. See teachers
at work doing the same activities that their students will do.
On
October 17th, 2004, Imagiverse lost a dear friend and a wonderful inspiration. Steven
Dworetzky developed the MER REP project shown within the pages of Imagiverse,
and trained many teachers like Michelle
Mock and Bonnie Walters who went on the adapt the project at their schools. He
will be dearly missed by everyone at
Imagiverse and the many students and teachers he has
inspired through the years.
