mars is cool

For my science methods class everyone is required to attend a workshop for teachers called professional development. When I become a teacher I'll have to do this, so the more experience the better! On Saturday a couple of my NAU friends and I met up at ASU to go to the NASA Mars Educator Conference or Maker Mars. We were all in a large conference room filled with tables of teachers separated by grade levels. I met Scott and Marmi who were super nice teachers. I also met the ASU underwater robotics team, also nice and wayyyy smart! There were other robotics programs for all grade levels, including elementary, and now really wish I could have my own robot. My inner geek really came out that day! 

We were able to hear from one of the engineers who worked on the Mars Rover and he described his journey at NASA. I really just loved how humble and honest he was about the whole process. He pointed out how many of the rovers had crashed or were lost in space even after decades of work, and how those failures helped them to reach the success of finally landing on Mars. MARS GUYS. It was through trial, error, exploration, discovery and, most importantly, failure. He related education to landing on Mars by stating that students and children need to fail and learn how to fail quickly. It helps them to learn, grow and improve. It was such a great speech! We were able to experience failure when we did the "marshmallow challenge" where you are given some uncooked spaghetti, 3ft of tape, and a piece of string.  we had to use everything to try and make our marshmallow the largest heighth form the tables with the marshmallow on top. Some people had elaborate and pretty toweres (the robotics guys) but ours was messy and broke miserably at the end of our time to build. There was no doubt that we definitely tried!

We were also given a task to create a prototype with a box full of dollar store items for something humans can use on Mars and we made a "bone saver" or a weighted suit to help prevent bone loss since Mars does not have a strong gravitational pull like Earth. As sciency as that sounds, it looked pretty ridiculous since I was the one in my group that was putting this suit on. After we finished inventing they wanted me to stay there, while everyone else got cake, so other groups could take pictures... UM NO. Other than that, I really enjoyed my time since I also won a giant framed poster of the Mars Rover for my future classroom! 

The whole theme of the conference was to  encourage students have the courage to make things whatever it may be. I learned that by creating these types of opportunities, I can help inspire that one student to have a desire to become an astrobiologist, an astronaut, an engineer, or anything they think might be too hard. This made me think of a quote that I saw on President Monson's Facebook page literally a few days before the conference and it made me love our prophet and Heavenly Father even more.
"I urge youth not to take counsel of their fears. I hope they will not say, "I'm not smart enough to study chemical engineering; hence, I'll study something less strenuous." "I can't apply myself sufficiently well to study this difficult subject or in this difficult field; hence, I'll choose the easier way." I plead with youth to choose the hard way and to tax their talents, and our Heavenly Father will make them equal to their tasks. If one should stumble, if one should take a course and get less than the A grade desired, I hope such a one will not let it discourage him. I hope that he will rise and try again."

 Obviously I've had a fun weekend but I'm SO behind on my lettering. And I plan on squeezing all my missed days together. I have a lot of ideas so I'm excited to get them all down on paper. I'll be posting those soon! 
Im off to do some more homework so here's a sunset picture from the other day you can look at (insert heart emojis here).