American Indian Mobile Educational Resources

What is AIMER?

• The American Indian Mobile Educational Resources (AIMER) provides hands-on space science lessons/activities to teach concepts of physics and astronomy and engineering to
  pre-college Native American students at K-12 schools on rural Indian reservations in Arizona.
• The project is operated in partnership with the NAU/NASA Space Grant, the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science and the College of Engineering, Forestry & Natural Sciences .  AIMER was originally made possible in 1995 by a computer grant from the Intel Corporation and generous support from NAU’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Raytheon Corporation.
• AIMER also provides telescopes for evening star parties in conjunction with classroom activities held during the day. We encourage community members to attend these star parties as well and often participate as part of a school STEM or science night.

How is AIMER used?

• AIMER can be requested by a teacher at any reservation school in Arizona to supplement his or her classes during the academic year at no charge to the school.  AIMER is scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis, using the calendar and request links located below.

Below are some suggested in-class lessons:

• Kindergarten: What causes day and night?
• 1st Grade: UV bead inquiry
• 2nd Grade: Play-Doh size model of Earth, Moon, and Mars
• 3rd Grade: Telescope basics (reflecting and refracting), followed by solar observing
• 4th Grade: Modeling lunar phases (we would need an open, darkened area for the students to form a circle)
• 5th Grade: Play-Doh size model of the solar system including Pluto (75 minutes)
• 6th Grade: The sun, with emphasis on UV radiation, followed by solar observing
• 7th Grade: Solar system distance model
• 8th Grade: Comets
• 9th-12th Grade: Solar system size model, solar system distance model, rockets (bottle, alpha, alka, stomp and straw)

Unless otherwise noted, each of the above activities takes about an hour.