With the help of  Dr. Jeffrey C. LaCombe, University of Nevada, Reno faculty member in Materials Science & Engineering, my students and two other fourth grades at my school are designing and building “payloads” that will be launched on a high altitude balloon that will reach (if there are no complications) at least 80,000 feet. As part of the camera, temperature and other data gathering instruments our payload will contain, my students are writing their “High Hopes” for their school, community and the world. We want to include yours’ too! Here is how it is explained on our class blog along with links to the other parts of our project. Please comment on our class blog if you and/or your students are interested in joining in:

We have “High Hopes” for our school, community and the world. We also are part of a project to send a high altitude balloon that will include a “payload” we get to build with a camera that will snap a photo every 5 seconds for the over 2 hours it will take to float up to over 80,000 feet. That is over 15 miles! We will also monitor temperature and other readings.

We thought it would be cool to include our “High Hopes” as part of the payload so they really will be “High Hopes!” It turns out we have room to include everyones’ “High Hopes” and we want to include YOUR “High Hopes” too!

Just before we launch our balloon on May 27, 2010, we will copy all the comments you leave on this post with your own “High Hopes” to a CD or DVD and send them up with ours. That way your “High Hopes” will actually be raised up really, really high too!

We are doing other activities too. We are learning about lighter than air balloons, air pressure, the atmosphere and more. We have already written blog posts on this blog that include videos we produced about the science involved in balloon flight. In addition we have a wiki page we are designing to share our learning and news about our project. – Here is a link. We also have photos from our classroom learning and will include photos from the balloon flight on our class Flickr page.

We want to thank – teachers and students from The University of Nevada, Reno, for supporting and helping us with this project.

So if you or your class would like to participate, just leave your “High Hopes” in the comments on this blog post. We will do the rest.

Leave your comment in a form something like this:

I live in (Your City and Country) and my “High Hopes” for my school, community and the world are …..

So click the comment link on this blog post and send us your “High Hopes” right away!

Here are some samples of our own “High Hopes” to give you some examples:

I live in Sparks, Nevada, USA and my High Hope for the world is to keep the world safe and a better place to live.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my High Hope for the world is education for the kids that don’t have a school to learn in.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my “High Hopes” for the world include all people to stop violence and live in peace. But my Highest Hope for the world is to stop hunger and give people food.

I live in Sparks, Nevada, and My “High Hopes” for school include graduating high school and working hard to improve my grades. But my Highest Hope for school is to graduate college and get a good job that I like.

I live in Sparks, Nevada, and my “High Hopes” for my community include police because they keep us safe, hospitals because they can heal and fix the injuried and schools so we can graduate school.

I live in Sparks, Nevada and my High Hope for the world is ending homelessness because it’s kind of sad that someone has no roof over their head.

Learning is messy!