NASA App

The NASA App is the official app of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration featuring news, images, videos, learning materials, and all things space-related from NASA. The “Missions” section is an alphabetic catalogue that details current and past NASA space missions. In addition, the Missions section houses NASA’s future launch schedule, and it includes the dates and times of International Space Station-sighting opportunities relative to an iPad’s GPS position.

The “Images” section of the NASA App houses almost 13,000 images taken by NASA’s space exploration machines and includes photographs from space, pictures of space missions and astronauts, and artists’ interpretations of space phenomena. Users can access the “Videos” section to peruse NASA’s collections of videos, including recordings from the control room, launch pad, and space. The NASA App also includes sections that offer up-to-the-minute NASA news and learning features about the universe, among other materials.

Instructional Ideas

1. Teachers can use the “Missions” section in the NASA App to assign pairs of students different space missions from NASA history. Following, students can be instructed to create an educational presentation using the information within the NASA App, as well as outside sources. In their presentations, students can summarize the mission, explain its importance, and discuss significant findings resulting from the mission. When creating their presentation, students can brainstorm with apps like InkFlow or iThoughtsHD, save Internet research with Pocket, collaborate using Dropbox or Google Drive, and then create their presentations with iMovie, Haiku Deck, Keynote, or Videolicious.  Lastly, students can share their presentations with their classmates.
2. Students can use the NASA App to develop their reading comprehension and writing skills. To do so, teachers can instruct students to read an article posted in the “Featured” section as a whole class, with a partner, or individually. Following, students can be required to compose one to three multiple-choice questions that can be answered by reading the article. Additionally, students should be instructed to create a single-sentence summary of the article. Students can then be placed in pairs, and each partner in the pair can answer his or her partner’s multiple-choice questions. After answering the questions, the partners can share their single-sentence summaries and work to draft a new single-sentence summary. When all the questions have been answered and the summaries have been composed, teachers can conclude the activity by having each pair of students share their questions and summaries. A class discussion about the questions and summaries can then ensue.
3. Teachers can use the NASA App as an attention-grabber by showing the class a video from the “Videos” or “TV and Radio” section. Following, students can be instructed to write down or tweet five facts they learned as a “Do Now” classroom activity.
4. After teaching a lesson about space, teachers can have their students write out any additional questions that were not answered during the lesson. Following, the teacher can collect each student’s questions and redistribute them to the class. Students can then attempt to find the answer to their classmate’s question using apps like Star Chart, Google Search, or Bing for iPad. For any questions that students are unable to locate answers, the teacher can submit those questions to a NASA official using the NASA App’s tweet option.
5. Teachers can use the Star Chart app in conjunction with the NASA App to assign students a research activity. To do so, the teacher can instruct students to use Star Chart to explore stars, planets, comets, and the constellations, and then choose a topic about which they would like to learn more. Following, students can use the NASA App and the Internet browser to conduct further research about their chosen topic. Students can then create a short movie about their findings using Stop Motion Studio, iMovie, or Videolicious that can then be shared with the class.

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