The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Education is releasing this NASA Cooperative Agreements Notice (CAN) for proposals.

The K-12 CAN effort seeks proposals that incorporate innovative approaches for development and delivery of instructional materials and experiences

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that capture the interest of learners and actively involve them in relevant, NASA STEM-themed content applications.

The instructional materials and experiences should support secondary level teaching and learning, with a particular emphasis on high school education.

Each funded proposal is expected to leverage NASA’s unique contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to inspire young people to consider the importance of developing a possible interest in NASA–related careers, and/or to enhance students’ academic experiences and/or to improve educators’ abilities to engage and stimulate their students.

• Develop, promote, or utilize new, innovative, and replicable approaches to improving STEM learning and instruction; especially related to gender differences and low performing schools; • Provide experiences and activities with measurable learning outcomes that are grounded in education research or utilize STEM supported evidence, approaches, techniques, and/or innovative STEM tools with measurable learning outcomes; • Build STEM linkages and connections focused on high school but linking back to elementary and middle schools and forward to community colleges and universities to strengthen the linkages between education, research and best practices; and • Provide training and experiences that improve secondary educators’ abilities to engage their students in STEM learning and enhance teaching and learning in STEM content areas.

Two-Step Proposal Process:
Notice of Intent/Preliminary Proposals (NOI/PP) and Invited Full Proposals NASA Education will use a two-step process for reviewing and selecting proposals.

Proposers will submit a short Notice of Intent and Preliminary Proposal (NOI/PP) that briefly describes the work to be performed.

NASA content to be featured, audiences to be reached, need, innovative approaches to be employed, estimated costs, and summary of evidence supporting the methods, techniques, and tools to be used.

NOI/PPs will be reviewed internally by the NASA Office of Education and the NASA Mission Directorates, and the authors of the most promising ideas will be asked to submit full proposals.

The NOI/PPs will be due on June 01, 2010, with final invited full proposals due on July 19, 201 0. Step l:
Notice of Intent/Preliminary Proposal (Required) Organizations planning to submit a proposal in response to this CAN are required to submit a NOI/PP.

NOI/PPs must be submitted through NSPIRES, by the AOR, Grants.gov does not have this feature.

Step-1 Proposers can use either NSPIRES (http://nspires.nasaprs.com) or Grants.gov ( http://www.grants.gov/) for proposals submission.

All proposers, team members, and agency officials must be registered before proposal submission with NSPIRES regardless of the electronic submission system used.

NSPIRES remains the only system through which a Step-1 proposal can be continued as a Step-2 proposal.

Step-2 proposals must be submitted through NSPIRES.

The NOI/PP is limited to no more than five (5) pages and must be in 10 point font size.

Step 2:
Proposal Submission Proposers selected to develop and submit a full proposal will have approximately one month after formal notification to complete the full proposal package and submit.

All information needed to respond to this solicitation is contained in this CAN and in the companion document entitled Guidebook for Proposers Responding to a NASA Research Announcement January 2010 Edition (hereafter referred to as the NASA Guidebook for Proposers).

This document is located at:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/procurement/nraguidebook.