Saudi schools win NASA honors for protection of environment

Students of an Al-Ahsa school attend a GLOBE program workshop.

JEDDAH: Saudi schools received medals of honor from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) after the announcement of the results of 2016’s third quarter of the GLOBE Environmental Program for data entry.
Three schools from Al-Ahsa received medals in the GLOBE program for the protection of environment, for their research papers and solutions for solving problems to protect the environment, which were submitted by students through data entry.
Abdullah Al-Farhan, a certified instructor and coordinator of the environmental education and the GLOBE program in Al-Ahsa, told Arab News that GLOBE data can be entered in several ways, such as live data entry, training data entry, email data entry, and data entry on mobile apps.
The three schools that won the medals are Abdullah ibn Salam Secondary School, Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab Secondary School and Imam Eltahawy Secondary School for submitting data entry papers on “The atmosphere” and “Temperature and soil moisture.”
Al-Farhan explained that Al-Ahsa competed and won honors in this year’s GLOBE Environment Program, which is an international scientific programs supported by NASA; the National Science Foundation (NSF); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).
He said the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) science and education program, connects students, teachers, and professional and citizen scientists with opportunities to participate in science data collection by conducting real, hands-on science in their local communities.
He said GLOBE provides students and the public worldwide with opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the global environment and climate. The program not only engages students in learning about their local environment, it also empowers them to play an active role in adding to global data about our home planet.
GLOBE program activities, developed by the scientific community and validated by teachers, focus on Earth science topics with research-quality methods. The interdisciplinary activities support current learning standards and yield data that are used by working scientists. Getting students involved in project-based investigations encourages them to make connections between their local environment and the entire Earth system, providing a global perspective.
Al-Farhan explained that there are 112 countries included in the GLOBE program with more than 54,000 trained teachers representing more than 24,000 schools, where 1.5 million students joined the program from around the world. GLOBE’s database contains more than 100 million environmental measurements collected by students around the world.
Saudi Arabia joined the GLOBE program in 2002, represented by the Ministry of Education, and prepared special programs where students participated in studies and research.
Around 235 girls’ and boys’ schools from Saudi Arabia, with 30,000 students and 300 teachers, are part of the program, and 953 schools have received honors awards from NASA until now.
Saudi schools presented till now almost 705,000 recorded measurements for the program.
Al-Farhan said Al-Ahsa schools became part of the GLOBE program in 2008, and now 12 boys’ and girls’ schools are part of the program from Al-Ahsa because of the significant support and encouragement of the Ministry of Education.