Why is space important to people on Earth? What's happening in the growing space economy? How can we be prepared for humanity's future in space? Well, these are all great questions and they are some of the key questions we should be exploring in the classroom. But are we doing enough to educate the educators on what's to come? [Music] Welcome to T-Minus Deep Space from N2K Networks. I'm Maria Varmausus and today's guest is space educator and author Mark Wagner. Mark has been exploring how we can improve space education in the classroom by educating educators. How can we prepare the future workforce if those in charge of general education don't understand what's to come? Well, we started our conversation discussing how Mark became interested in space education and what he hopes to achieve by changing the approach to space in United States classrooms. [Music] I'm a lifelong space enthusiast. I went to space camp a couple times as a kid. I originally went to school to be an astronautical engineer. So I was studying spacecraft systems design and orbital mechanics and that sort of thing in the early 90s. But like everybody, I jumped ship. It was not the greatest time for the aerospace industry. A lot of my peers went to mechanical or civil engineering, but I jumped all the way to studying literature and philosophy. So I wound up becoming a high school English teacher. And there I got really excited about what was happening in education technology at the time. Google was just really getting started and getting interesting and computers were coming into classrooms sort of the second wave. So my career was 20 years of teaching educators to use technology in meaningful ways. And I did a lot of work with Google for Education over the years, ran the Google teacher academy off and on for like 13 years and produced a series of conference-like summits focused on Google for Education. So that was a crazy ride. We would put on 100 conferences a year in the peak years there before COVID. But that market was changing in 2019 anyway. And I started to get really excited about what I was seeing in the headlines and in the space industry in general. By that time, it was a great time to get involved again. So during COVID, I hit the reset button like everybody else. And my PhD, I got in education technology all in the way. But I went back and got graduate certificates in space education and space philosophy. Who knew that existed? I did not know that existed. Right. So I, yeah, I mean, it opened my mind a whole community of people that consider themselves space philosophers. It's been awesome. But I had my ducks in a row this time around and wrote a book based on the studies I had done. And I had an opportunity with the Space Prize Foundation to build a curriculum for high school students based on that. And then on top of that, I developed some professional development opportunities for teachers. And then over the last couple of years, I've worked with Space Prize Foundation, with the Aldrin Family Foundation, with SLU and with a handful of other space education initiatives. In fact, I host a space education alliance now. We've got about a hundred people involved from about 50 different organizations or 50 different space education initiatives. Many of them are within another organization. And it's really, it's inspiring to see how much work is happening in this field. A lot of it is happening in isolation. So connecting people has been really great to kind of bring a lot of those opportunities together. Well, thank you. Thanks for joining me. And this is such a great topic. I'm just like really jazzed to be talking to you about this. So I grew up in the 90s. I have my own mentality of what space education looks like. I have a kid going through elementary school now. I have some idea of what she's learning at school. But I mean, space education, especially when we're talking about the industry as it is now. I mean, how, how do we get, how do we teach kids about what's going on now beyond, you know, hey, here's the solar system here. So that works. I mean, that feels like a big gap. But I mean, I wonder how educators are sort of dealing with that challenge. Yeah. I mean, mostly not is, you know, I think the experience that you and I had is probably very similar to what most kids have today, which is, yeah, maybe, maybe they're learning about the solar system. Maybe their teachers are addressing the earth and space science standards. A lot of times the teacher is not confident in talking about science in general and certainly not confident about talking about space with the students. They're not thinking about space with their kids or what's happening in the growing space economy. So a lot of my work focuses on helping teachers gain that confidence to talk to their kids about this stuff. But to answer your question, it's, it's large that the space education is largely absent from classrooms today. But it's, but it's critically important, not just to say the future of humanity, but also to solving some of the biggest problems in schools today. So I talk about preparing kids to be part of the growing space economy. And I talk about preparing kids for humanity's multi planet future or humanity's future in space. But those are not necessarily things that will excite, well, they are things that will excite individual educators, but not the sort of things that will lead to mass adoption in schools. But space education is also a really great solution to some of the biggest problems in schools today. So for instance, I like to share, I like to share a few statistics around this topic, which is especially post COVID. Student disengagement is the biggest problem in schools. Kids had emergency distance learning and there's this real sense of like, well, why do we have to sit in chairs for six hours a day? One of the prime measures is chronic absences. So absent more than 10% of the time. So in New York City, post COVID, chronic absences are about 30% of kids, which is a roughly triple what they were before COVID. And there's a hand in hand, there's a similar problem with teacher burnout. So in LA, USD, for instance, 70% of teachers report a burnout and a desire to leave the profession. And we're seeing that across the country, teachers are just burnout, even several years in the wake of COVID. There's a lot on their shoulders. But there's also research to show that a tremendous majority of kids are interested in space. So Wakefield Research in partnership with UNICEF did a study in 2022 at 500 American families across demographics and they found 93% of US kids are interested in space. So this is not a boy thing or a girl thing or an elementary and secondary thing or a black or white or rich or poor or any other demographics like kids are interested in space. That's a huge number. You don't have 93% of anything when it comes to public policy, right? So and I have grad students who have done similar surveys or with their own students or their own network and they come out with like 85% of kids are interested in space. It's a huge, huge number anyway you cut it. So how do you re-engage kids in school and re-engage kids in STEM topics in particular? You tap into their natural interest in space. So now we're talking about not just this mission driven preparing kids for humanity's future. Now we're talking about solving the biggest problems in schools today by tapping into kids' interest in space and teaching them about what's coming up. And I think I don't want to gloss over either the idea of preparing them for the growing space economy because listeners of your show have probably heard similar statistics. But several years ago, statistics came out about the space industry now is a $400 billion a year industry. They were projecting a trillion dollars by 2040. About a year ago, the newer projection was a trillion dollars by 2030. And so we're talking about a growing rapidly growing trillion dollar industry and that's not even counting whole new industries like asteroid mining or space solar power, both of which are projected to be a trillion dollar industries, multi trillion dollar industries. So are we properly preparing our kids for that? And we don't just need scientists, engineers and astronauts. We need marketing people and HR people and computer scientists and you name it, right? We need artists. Like if you look at say a SpaceX broadcast, how many jobs are involved with say designing the UI to communicate that information and the broadcast. They are the best at that. It is really something. Yeah. And somebody's writing the score. Like there's really a whole production element to it. And I was lucky enough working with Space Prize Foundation to do an interview series. And it was mostly women because we were focused on empowering young women in that project. But women from all across the space industry. And we talked to scientists, engineers, astronauts, but we literally talked to a spacecraft interior designer and we talked to people doing space student and flight suit design. And what they call zero G fashion design. Like we talked to space historian. We talked to space lawyers. There's really sort of any kid that wants to be involved, whatever their strengths and interests can be involved. And on the flip side, even if they're not in the growing space economy, which is much bigger than just aerospace industry, but they probably are going to need to know what sort of developments are coming out of space. So I joke. 100%. Yep. If you're working for a sneaker company, you better understand what lightweight materials are coming out of space. You better understand, hey, what if your shoe is talking to Starlink and knows where it is and is part of the Internet of Things and so on. I know. And talking to GPS. Like, you know, how are you going to incorporate those developments into your field and your industry? And it's not unlike, I see a ton of parallels with where education technology was 15 or 20 years ago, where we literally had to convince teachers that teaching kids about the Internet was a good idea. And now it's really clear. It doesn't matter if your kid is going to be a graphic designer or what they're going to like, they better know how to use the Internet in their field. And I think we're, you know, over the next 10 to 15 years, we're going to see a similar change. I mean, we're already seeing it, but where space is affecting every industry. Even today, just something like GPS is affecting everything from, you know, how we get around to how we get food to who we date, like very fundamental human activities. That's right. Yep. We'll be right back. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. It's that paradigm shift is incredible. And I know for me, as a space interested child, I was like, well, I don't want to be an astronaut. I'm too chicken for that. So I guess there's just no path for me. So I just kind of ended there. And I wonder, you know, as, especially as we educate our educators and help them understand, you know, the future that is here, but also in development as space technology really does pervade everything. Is it an educational gap also with teachers who maybe just don't know all this stuff? Because certainly a lot of my peers don't. I just wonder how do we reach out to them and let them know like these are options that are going to be your students will be dealing with in a good way. But, you know, it'll be there. Yeah. Those are huge questions. And that's really where my education technology career was also is, you know, if you want to see change in schools, you really are going to have to inspire and empower students to do something. And so I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to inspire and empower educators and education leaders, right? And when you break that down, like inspiring and empowering somebody is about building their raising their awareness around what's possible and getting them excited about it. And then leaving them with the sense that they can be a part of it and they can do it, right? And so that comes back to what I was saying before about raising teachers confidence to talk about these things. And then I'm going to raise their awareness that they're even happening, right? Yeah, I would say I don't have any sort of scientific evidence of this, but a huge percentage of teachers would probably not be able to tell you what a Falcon 9 rocket was or that it could land vertically. Yeah, I think a lot of people still are very, it's NASA. That's it. Yeah. And that's it begins and ends there. Yeah. There's a significant portion of people that wouldn't be able to tell you that the space shuttle took off like a rocket and landed like an airplane or landed like a glider, right? Like, so just raising awareness of like, what have we done and what are we doing and what's coming is a huge part of it. And then being able to give teachers the resources they need to confidently go back to their classroom and share these things with their kids. So that could be very tactile manipulatives. It could be a 33 foot giant map of the moon like the Alderman Family Foundation has. It could be programs like SLU in terms of giving kids access to remote telescopes. There's tons of great initiatives or it could be much, it could be standards aligned to lesson plans that they could use to teach the things that they're already held accountable for, for instance. So depending on what their needs are and what their teaching context is, those kind of the resources they need to be successful might be very, very different. But I think the short answer to your question is like, how do we get teachers to this point and how do we sort of affect this change? Essentially, it may be my bias in the lens I'm seeing things through, but ultimately that comes down to professional development. You can't adopt a program and expect it's going to be used without helping teachers understand how to use it. And this is a big ask where we're raising awareness around all these scientific missions that are in progress and then how do they turn around and use it with their kids? What can they use? How do they use it? What are the best ways to engage kids and so on? It's a significant professional development undertaking. But I will say it is similar to what we saw when we started bringing computers in the classroom or internet in the classroom or school districts going Google. Like there was a significant professional development hurdle, but it's largely overcome in the last decade or the years before COVID even to the point where everybody was on a Chromebook and Google classroom or whatever they had during COVID. I used to work in cybersecurity for quite a while and my daughter last year came home with a how to stay safe on the internet handout. That was a great explainer. I was not prepared for her school to be giving her that. I was thinking like I would have to, you know, she's a little too young to be on the internet, but you know, just general things. The school had that and I was really impressed that they were there already. I wasn't expecting that. So I'm just imagining maybe one day we'll be there with something space related. I don't know what specifically, but that would be great. Well, if no, if I were to look into my crystal ball and I talk about this all the time right now to anybody that listen, I think that's that is the 10 to 15 years that are ahead of us is, you know, you do get this sense working in schools that nothing ever changes and everything is cycling like the tides. But but there but when you stop and look at it, there has been real progress when it comes to technology in schools and the internet and schools and things like that. And I think like what I'm seeing right now is very, very like what I was seeing in schools in say 2013, where the most innovative schools are starting to be really interested in how to prepare their kids for the space industry. And they're starting to host events around it and they're starting to share what they're doing. And I think over the next couple of years, we're going to see that spread significantly and we're going to need kind of the ad hoc programs that are working for the go getters right now are going to need to be scalable and something that that you can get more and more teachers on board. And but I do think in 10, 15 years, we're not going to have to be convincing people to teach kids about space. It's going to be a no brainer like, hey, whatever industry going into you better know what's going on. I'm with you on that vision. I 100% see that happening and very ardently hope for it. So it feels like a good time to introduce Saloo to the audience because you've mentioned it a few times and this feels like a natural segue, aside from the outstanding name. All our telescope you say listeners will recognize. Yeah, I know for me the first time I looked through a telescope as a kid that was an absolute light bulb moment. I know for a lot of people it is. So I'm getting ahead of myself. Tell me about Saloo. So if you can imagine and I'm working with a project right now that was doing this if you can imagine say getting a really great telescope and gifting it to a middle school, you're going to run into a few problems. Some of them are professional development. This is each you know how to use the telescope. But you also have to convince kids and staff to come back at night and you're kind of concerned about local weather and local light pollution, you know, especially if you're from an urban or suburban area. However, what Saloo does is give kids access to a network of remote telescopes. So now we're talking world-class telescopes, you know, at 9000 feet on the Canary Islands or in Chile or in Australia and dark sky areas and they're able to access these telescopes during school hours from any device with a browser. So it could be their school Chromebook or their iPad or whatever. And they're able to to watch the live streams from whatever telescopes have to be online, get little mini lectures if they happen to be doing that, which is not something they normally emphasize about Saloo, but it's one of my favorite parts, just listening to the lectures and watching the stream. But they're also able to schedule images of things that they're interested in and want to learn about. So, and then Saloo scaffolds that with all kinds of learning resources and with what they call quests. So it's a learning quest where maybe you're learning about different types of nebulae or you're learning about galaxies or you're learning about the planets. And there's cultural quests you might learn about ink and mythology while you're learning about ink and constellations and there's historical quests. Maybe you're learning about the Apollo landings while you're learning about the moon. So there's a ton of sort of instructional elements built right into this system. But the heart of it is kids are controlling remote telescopes from any device during school hours. So it completely changes their experience of astronomy. And then also it sounded like you've got a pretty cool telescope yourself, but you know, for most backyard telescopes, it's really challenging to say get a really good look at the Orion Nebula or something like that. But if you've got a half meter telescope in the Canary Islands, all of a sudden you're getting these just spectacular images. And they're not just canned images on Wikipedia or a textbook or something like that. You scheduled the image, you chose to something that's all automated if you want to take the systems recommendations. But you can also choose which telescope and which filters and things like that and people do their own post processing. So you can get really geeky with it and it's pictures that they took, right? So even for me as an adult, it completely changed my relationship to astronomy. I've always been interested in it, but now it's like, oh, like I want to go down this rabbit hole and learn about Nebulae. And I'm taking pictures of emission Nebulae and reflection Nebulae and dark Nebulae and listening to lectures about it and reading about it and taking these, you know, fantastic images and sharing them with friends and family. You know, I've had some really spectacular evenings that happen to be up in the mountains right now talking to you. And I've had some evenings here where it's like I would order the picture or something and run outside and look at it in the sky and run back inside and look at the picture. It makes it so much more real. Yeah, especially for those of us who live where it's maybe more, I live in the suburbs. So for me, the night sky is a scant few stars at best. Yes. And being able to really get that connection, it really, it is absolutely a life changing thing for a lot of us. Honestly, we remember that first time you see Saturn's rings or something. It's just blows the mind. So it's sort of to go back to the first half of our conversation here, it kind of checks a lot of those boxes, right? It taps into kids natural interest in space. It is that kind of awe inspiring moment. It's certainly like if you literally think of odds, it's just experience of feeling a part of something bigger than yourselves and looking out at the universe does that. So that sort of you've got that whole engagement, motivation, inspiration element. And then it's all of the, you know, very rich resources necessary for success in an academic situation. It's all standards aligned quests and kids are there's content with kids to engage with a different grade levels and subject areas. And they're able to write back, respond to prompts and take their own images and write their own observations. One of the coolest things about it actually, speaking of that is it's, it's a very authentic experience of science. They're not learning about astronomy. They're doing astronomy. Yeah. Their process with SLU is exactly what a scientist would do. They're capturing their own data, they're writing firsthand observations and then there's a community element. They share it with a network of peers and experts for feedback. So they're literally doing astronomy and doing it the way a professional scientist would when they're when they're using SLU's network of telescopes. It's really cool. It's just, it's really cool. And the minimizing the frustration factor of it's cloudy. I have to be there at 10 p.m. at night at some far away observatory. I've had that experience. It's nothing to spirits kids faster than that. That, yeah, that's a real, it's really smart. It's interesting. So these, you know, these observatories are high altitude, dark, dark sky areas. And still sometimes there's days that the Chile telescopes are offline because of weather or whatever. But kids also learn to look at the weather order to consider, you know, what is the, you know, what angle of altitude is the, is the object the higher in the sky, the more clear it's usually going to get. And where is the moon? Because if the moon is up, it's that's going to detract from your images, even at these observatories. So the system makes it super, super easy to just book something and get a cool picture. But the more, you know, if kids want a deep dive, they can really get into the conditions that they're, that they're shooting in and how they're capturing their data. That's so great. I love it. It's a great concept. I'm like hoping my kid has access to this because my mom wants to use this. Well, there are, there are, there are home accounts as well. Most of my focus, of course, is getting it, getting it into schools. You could, you could go log in and pay a couple bucks a month for a family account. You see a sign up. Don't be surprised. There's a question that I have often wondered and you mentioned that amazing 93% of kids being interested in space. There's this burning question in my mind. I feel like this might be like a good philosophical wrap up question. What happens? Why are we losing so many kids that 93% is not translating into people going into aerospace. I mean, I know it's a very multifaceted problem. I believe me. I know. I'm just curious, why are we, why are we still losing so many kids as maybe as they get into high school or something? That, yeah, that is a great question. One of the things we see, and I taught high school and I love working with high school kids in part because they can, they really can do amazing things. Like people tend to really underestimate kids at that age. And we see even what SLU kids are doing, legitimate research and tracking exoplanet, you know, passing in front of a star and changing the brightness of it and things like that. It's really, really cool. But, but statistically, it's middle school where kids will decide that's not for me. And so, yeah, we'll see, you know, in elementary school, everybody likes space. Everybody likes science because it's interesting and cool. But you'll see, particularly with girls, with young women, they'll check out around them because they've got the message somehow, somewhere that science isn't for them or math isn't for them. And you see that a lot with, you know, kids that are, you know, in rougher socioeconomic situations where they're seeing that it's not for them or, you know, whatever, you know, there are other demographic issues where we're seeing that. And there are demographic issues where we see minorities or people of color are checking out at that point because they think it's not for them. So there's, there are huge societal messages that need being addressed so that we're not doing that. But from a proactive standpoint, middle school is a great opportunity to capture kids and keep them involved. Like, they still have that childlike wonder and they haven't, perhaps haven't checked out yet and decided it's not for them. And you can get them excited about pursuing additional STEM education as they go forward. You know, who knows what career they'll choose down the line, but at least keeping those doors open is, that's a good opportunity to do that. So I'm not sure that really answers your question, but I think a lot of people think it's not for them or they, you know, they think it's just for scientists, engineers and astronauts. And they don't see a path. I think it's a lack of awareness there and a lack of confidence, just like with teachers. They don't see a path forward for someone like them. I'm a great anecdote. When I was working with Space Prize in New York City, we, we did a contest for girls in New York City schools, high schools, to win a zero G parabolic flight. And there was an essay contest and a video contest and it turned into a lot of other things. But, but one of the finalists who went on the flight had written, started by writing an essay for the contest. And she was a self-described sort of English and social studies nut. And she didn't think it was for her. And apparently her dad convinced her like, no, you'd be good at this. Like, you should write this essay. And throughout the thing, because she was a finalist, she got a ton of other opportunities. We connected the kids with mentors and so she had a mentor who had done PR for NASA and had worked for a bunch of space startups after that. And so this girl at the end of the process, she said, oh, I never knew there was, you know, a job for a writer in the space industry. Like, I think I could do this. Like, I could be a writer for NASA. And it was like, okay, that's, that's the moment we want is kind of helping kids see a path forward for them, whatever their sort of their strengths and interests are. And that is, that's, that's, that's raising awareness around what's happening in the growing space economy to use that phrase again. And, and helping them see, sometimes that's literally helping them see someone like them in those roles. And they're certainly out there. And it's just a matter of connecting kids with them. [Music] That's it for T-Mine is Deep Space, brought to you by N2K Cyber Wire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. T-Mine is Deep Space is produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpey is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
