Satellites are playing a vital role in helping Project Exploration enhance the science education experience for minority youth, and specifically girls, in Chicago and around the globe.

Project Exploration brings inner-city youth to Montana or Wyoming to conduct paleontology field work, but the program’s outreach is not limited to the field. The organization also uses satellite technology to create an interactive classroom aimed at building an interest in science among minorities that my otherwise not have exposure to paleontology.

“We are trying to reduce the distance between science and everyone else,” Gabrielle Lyon, executive director of Project Exploration, told Satellite News. “The trick is to find ways to break down barriers. That is everything from getting objects and exhibits and actual science out from behind glass to making opportunities for youth that otherwise would never have them.”

For Project Exploration, satellites are a key component in breaking down those barriers.

With the aid of satellite technology, “people are able to follow a field expedition and see discoveries as they are happening,” Lyon said. “Our most intimate and our most personalized work is with minority youths and girls in Chicago and Chicago public schools, but we are reaching people around the word through our online expeditions. We never would have thought about doing that kind of work if satellite technology wasn’t available.”

Project Exploration uses satellite equipment and airtime donated by Telenor Satellite Services, which allows those on the expedition to upload text and images to the organization’s Web site (http://www.projectexploration.org) from a field location. “Being able to send data and images means that you can attach a picture onto something that people have a very difficult time imagining” based on just text alone, Lyon said. Those images also have been sent to major media outlets to allow those who may not be able to view the progress on the Internet.

Likewise, and perhaps most important to Project Exploration’s goal of bringing science to minority youths in a meaningful way, is how satellites keep the field workers connected to the classrooms. “This upcoming expedition [which begins in September], as with expeditions past, we will probably correspond with close to 1,000 kids across the state of Illinois. We will answer their questions while we are in the field and have the correspondence posted on the Web. The immediacy is really transformative because it makes the kids feel like someone is really paying attention to them.”

–Gregory Twachtman

(Gabrielle Lyon, Project Exploration, 773/834-7614)