Celestia Forums

Hi all:

This year, I am teaching advanced Biology to high school teenagers. Being a cosmologically inclined person, I try to remind these teens that the study of life on Earth is but a small part of the bigger picture, with a big universe out there. I teach them that with probable countless trillions of planets in the universe, the presence of life on just one of them (earth) is very unlikely. More likely is the prevalence of life on billions if not trillions of other worlds.

That leads to the question of how life originated on Earth. I wanted to introduce that topic to them in a very dramatic way, so I spent quite a few man-hours producing a short but very dramatic introductory video to show them, titled, "Introduction to the Origin of Life". The video is carefully choreographed to powerful music and begins with a galactic zoom into a primitive Earth of billions of years ago. To show that Earth, I used Celestia-ED, with specific scenes from my activity 9 (the Primitive Earth and Moon). The texture of early Earth was done for me several years ago by Don Edwards. Its use was very effective in the video. My students loved it, and the other teachers in my school all asked to use the video.

I posted the video on both YouTube and on Vimeo, and have already had teachers from other locales downloading it.

You can check the video out here: http://vimeo.com/16794275, or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMgoelauLQ

FYI, I've actually produced 8 other videos for educational use, plus three videos using Celestia to showcase scenes from the Celestia addons for 2001, a Space Odyssey, and Star Trek. You can find them on my YouTube or Vimeo channels.

Enjoy

Frank

Frank,

while this video is nice to watch and the music is pleasing, I am worried. Obviously this video consists of a collage of many video sniplets authored by other people. I am sure there is a host of pending Copyrights involved! Did you receive explicit permission by all the other authors before publishing your video on YouTube?? Also material that is free of charge is usually subject to Copyrights that need at least be mentioned (e.g. GPL licensed stuff).

The only credit I could read there was to Don Edwards for his Earth texture. Where is the rest of the required references to other peoples' original material??

Fridger

while i am all for very lose interpretation of copyright use by educators . i can see where there might be some issues

i think i have seen most of the clips on The Discovery Chanel ( some from "The Blue Planet " some form different things on space)
i do hope that there is a full list of what and from where ,was used


- different note -
and as a kid ( way back then ) refused to put the " G" work in the pledge of allegiance ( USA)- personal beliefs,
that others might not have . and , yes, a card caring "Pastaferian "
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Pastaferian
that last bit is a bit "iffy" here in the states ( not other places) with the separation of church and state and all .

but all in all a nice vid .

John:

Interesting about the Pastaferian. I had not heard of it before.

I too do not believe in Intelligent Design, but any video to be shown that even introduces the question of the origin of life, must at least bring up the topic. If you consider all of human history, I would have to guess that over 85% - 90% of all of the humans who have ever lived, believes now or believed in the past that a god or gods created life on Earth. In America, over 8 out of every 10 kids coming into my classroom believe it, because that is what they have been taught by parents, church or both. So, to introduce the topic of origins of life scientifically, one has to at least mention it as one of the theories of how life began, as I do in the video.

Subsequently, in classroom discussion, I demonstrate to my students that the evidence on Earth overwhelmingly supports the concept that life originally randomly by the process of abiogenesis, with a slight possibility that some of the building blocks of life such as amino acids, etc., could even have arrived here on asteroids or comets from space. I point out that Earth geohistory and biology does not support the idea that life came from gods.

Anyway, glad you liked the video.

Frank

the topic of just HOW life got started can be a "fun" one in the classroom
no matter what you do somebody will be a bit upset ,but mostly only the very far left and right

in todays climate i would not be to surprised to see the "Darwin" trials start over again ( and some have )


but that is not a good topic for this forum - causes all kinds of flaming

so back to the original question

i take it every part of the vid is fully documented as for it's use and redistribution ?

Frank,

you did not even care to comment about my earlier worries (before John's post) concerning Copyrights from many authors that contributed their original work in your video without being credited?

Fridger

My understanding is that the copyright issues have been taken care of and there is no need to discuss them here.

I am locking this topic.