Students launch near-space weather balloon at EdTech in the Bend

Participants in the Fourth annual EdTech in the Bend conference learned about launching a near-space weather balloon from students from the Concord School District on Thursday.

The two day conference is part of the Indiana Department of Education’s Summer of eLearning Conferences for teachers.

The near-space balloon was launched from Jackson Middle School at 10 a.m.

It is expected to reach an altitude of about 100,000 feet and has a 360-degree camera, sensors and GPS.

The students from Concord launched their own balloon last year.

“The goal is definitely to get teachers to see that kids can do this. We have students here that are fourth, fifth and sixth graders, who have implemented with classes in the past, and one of the messages that we wanted to convey is that kids can do this project, and it’s accessible for all students," said Ryan Wallick, K-4th Grade High Ability Teacher at Concord Elementary.

“You fill this latex balloon with helium and you make a rig that can have experiments and stuff on it. And it has a thing called an Eagle Flight computer which tracks data like how fast it’s going, what’s the temperature and how high it’s going," Said Jacob Nush, a fifth grader at Concord.

The students placed items on the balloon to see how they would be affected--like candy, yeast and slime.