Malenfant wrote:It'd be nice if the educators actually started using it... I was expecting people to jump straight on the board and start exchanging ideas about how to use Celestia in practice in the classroom or the lecture hall (or even in the field, say at star parties), but it's been a bit quiet so far.
I've started a thread there asking how people use Celestia for education and I've only had one response so far.
I know I, as well as many of the other educators in America, are just starting our school year. It is a very busy time for us and our answers are apt to be short, even one liners.
I use Celestia primarily as a visualization tool to show students what we are talking about in class. Frank's addon is one of my primary tools to this end due to the vast amount of documentation included, a KEY to educaitonal use. Personally, I believe with the recent work on a more informational Celestia interface by, smack me if I get it wrong, Vincent, is a step in the right direction for educational use. Sadly, for students, just visiting a bunch of stars and planets gets old. There has to be something to learn from visiting an extrasolar planet.
Lesson plans, like Celestia, are probably in development by many of us, but just like my addons, take vast quantities of time that I do not have. I wish I could dedicate some of my school time to it, but it's just not possible with everything you have to cover in a year.
I believe as Celestia is great as is, and it has VAST potential for education. There just has to be more work on those additions. Is the informational overlay going to be part of the next release? That will play a large part in it's educational use.
! I'd like to discuss using things like the information overlay (the info patch, yes, with the ultra-verbose mode?) there.