Welcome
Welcome to the Voyage of Exploration Website. The Voyage of Exploration Program is a three-year science education program for middle school age students (11 to 13 year olds) sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Living Classrooms Foundation. The program is presented in three different venues: After-school, Saturday morning and Summer Exposition sessions. It is aimed at students who have an interest in learning and having fun. The program has several components based around a STEM curriculum. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Student participants are engaged through inquiry based learning, informal educational programs and hands-on activities.
The goals of Voyage are to increase access to informal STEM-focused programming for minority and low-income students; to build strategic partnerships between Living Classrooms and faith and community based organizations that provide services to under-resourced schools and communities; and to identify and share best practices of working with low-income students, families and communities. Student participants are also introduced to the world of science as a place of future employment. It is hoped that program activities will excite and motivate students to prepare themselves for higher education opportunities through middle school and high school courses and extra-curricular activities.
What is STEM?
- Science. Science is a way of gaining knowledge by observing how things work and doing experiments to find out how things react under different conditions. There are special names for different types of science. For example, biology is the study of living things—plants and animals; and zoology is the study of animals.
- Technology is a way of applying knowledge to a specific area about the ways in which things work. Computer technology, for example, has to do with the procedures of how computers operate.
- Engineering is the way people apply science to solve problems in everyday life. A naval engineering, for example, solves problems having to do the water and boating.
- Mathematics is the study of numbers and the wonderful ways people can work with quantities to understand the world around them.
Voyage of Exploration Programs focus on the past, present and future of the maritime industry and demonstrate how the historic technologies of shipbuilding and navigation have evolved from the past to the present and into the future. Programming will take place at Living Classroom facilities, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum, the Masonville Cove Environmental Center, the USS Constellation and the Torsk Submarine.
Living Classroom Sites where the Voyage of Exploration Activities take place:
- Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum, a cultural and education center that celebrates Baltimore’s diverse maritime history and the 19th century Chesapeake Marine Railway and Drydock Company, which was the first African American owned and operated shipyard in the United States. The company was founded by Isaac Myers and 14 other African Fell’s Point and went on to advise the ship yard directors once the shipyard was established. The Maritime Park has a boat building workshop, a working marine railway, historic and hands-on interpretative galleries.
- Masonville Environmental Center is on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, a site in the Baltimore Harbor. It is an urban wilderness conservation area comprised of 70 acres of water ways and 54 acres of wetlands, protected bird sanctuaries and nature trails.
- USS Constellation is a national historic landmark and the last all-sail warship built by the US Navy.
- USS Torsk is a World War II Submarine in the Inner Harbor.
Voyage is designed to show youth that minority figures in the past and present have made significant contributions to science through maritime and aerospace industries, and that they have an opportunity to be future leaders in these fields too. The project will engage students by immersing them in technology and the study of navigation from a historical perspective that shows how that technology has evolved into modern day techniques as well as the scientific differences and similarities between the two. The program also looks into the future to where technology is headed as students explore the roles that they can play by choosing careers in science and technology fields. In addition, the program will be designed to help participants understand that the ability to navigate courses of travel on sea and in the air can also be a metaphor for navigating one’s way to success in life.