keeping current of all that is happening
in aeronautics and space is very
difficult indeed
in order to help educators get the
results of nasa activities as soon as
possible after they occur
nasa has created a teacher resource
center network to provide educators with
educational materials to use in their
instruction as you will see
the teacher resource center network
consists of three parts
teacher resource centers regional
teacher resource centers and the central
operations of resources for educators
established in
1976 the teacher resource centers serve
all grade levels from kindergarten to
college level by having a variety of
materials and services available for the
educators you have a slide teacher
resource centers or trcs are located on
each of the nine nasa centers throughout
the united states
we were established to provide materials
for the teacher for the classroom use
materials such as slides
videotapes
film strips slide programs
activities each nasa center has a
teacher resource center
and they provide the same types of
services this one does
we also have regional teacher resource
centers that are put in colleges and
universities and they provide they have
a
starter kit they don't have everything
that we have but they have a nice
selection of videotapes and slides and
film strips there are 20 of these
regional teacher resource centers or
rtrc located at universities colleges
and museums so that teachers and other
educators who are not located near a
nasa center
can have access to nasa materials
but even these rtrcs are not easily
visited by some educators
so in 1986 nasa established the central
operations of resources for educators
we also have a organization called core
which is a central distribution center
and for teachers that are not able to
come in
to the center or other nasa centers they
can purchase
the nasa materials through core
nasa decided that there was a need
to provide a mail order service
for teachers wanting their educational
materials
on a national and worldwide basis as you
probably know or many people know at
each of the nine nasa facilities
there are teacher resource centers and
at 20 universities and museums
throughout the united states there are
regional teacher resource centers but
for the most part they just serve a
certain locale and if it's not
convenient for a teacher to get to one
of those places they now have the
opportunity to come to us to get those
same materials
located near cleveland ohio at the
lorain county joint vocational school
corps provides the same materials that
are available through the trcs and rtrcs
these materials include computer
programs slide packages and video tapes
by using core an educator who cannot
easily get to a teacher resource center
or regional teacher resource center has
access to these materials in a
pre-packaged ready-to-use format
coors business continues to grow as more
and more educators find out about the
organization and request the core
catalog
presently
we receive between three and 500
requests for
core catalogs every month we have
serviced educators in every state and
over 50 countries throughout the world
so and our business is growing steadily
and as as more people find out about us
the orders keep increasing
educators can find out about us
quite a few different ways one is from
our news release being printed in
educational publications where they can
send in on stationery requesting our
catalog or else sometimes they call us
and we send our catalog out
also we receive a lot of referrals from
the teacher resource center network
where they may have our brochure in
you know available in the teacher
resource center and the teacher sends
our detach and mail requesting our
catalog which we send out to them and we
also receive a lot of referrals from
nasa headquarters
most of those referrals are from
overseas we get a substantial amount of
overseas requests because they're
they're first of all it seems like
people in other countries are very
interested in this united states space
program and secondly they really don't
have anywhere to go
they're obvious
in the united states they have many
sources of aerospace information nasa
being one of the primary ones so we are
just one of many where in the other
countries we are it seems by their
interest you know one of very few
sources open to them
core is a two-person operation
but utilizes the resources of the
lorraine county joint vocational school
this helps keep the cost of the
materials at a minimum
and at the same time helps the students
get training
nasa formed a partnership with lorain
county jvs
to set up core at this site and the
reason we were selected is because we
are able to pull from the school's
resources to run the center primarily
we're able to use many of the students
to help us run our operation
at this time core is just a two-person
office myself and my secretary and it
would be impossible for us to handle the
amount of requests we get for materials
and for information without
a heavy support staff
for example one of the programs that we
utilize heavily is the work adjustment
program
it's a special ed class located at the
school they do all of our assembly for
our catalogs and all of our envelope
stuffing for all of the promotional
materials that we distribute and
basically they handle that for us
totally so we just simply have to put
the materials in the mail once they're
done doing that assembly work for us