Up, up and away: Students document balloon, kite projects for viewing on YouTube

One team of students---Emily Cornea, Jennifer Dombroski, Jennifer Forrester, Jeff Przybylo and Anthony Sautter---readies its balloon for launch.

Students in UM-Dearborn's environmental studies course "GEOL340: Remote Sensing" converged onto YouTube earlier this spring after documenting on film their course-long projects which saw them launch balloons and kites into "space."

Small teams of students---who worked under Jacob Napieralski, associate professor of geology---either launched a balloon approximately 60-90,000 feet with a camera recording images along the way or built a kite designed to take photographs at specific angles and altitudes. The teams filmed their progress each step of the way and posted the edited videos on the popular video-sharing website.

"I decided to integrate this project into the remote sensing course so the students would design their own remote sensing systems that could capture imagery of Earth's surface and data from the troposphere," Napieralski said. "Additionally, students learned the value of collaborating since these projects would have been difficult to do individually; drafted proposals and worked with limited budgets; managed time relative to deadlines; and accepted that challenges, limitations and failures are a natural part of science, and reported their results as informative videos."

The student-produced videos speak for themselves … take a look!

http://youtu.be/6QY_aod_lPk

http://youtu.be/Qnlu83RHlz4

http://youtu.be/FmSdo9JRNTs

http://youtu.be/KycMN87f8lo[/embed