As many of you know, earlier this year, a project manager at NASA discovered Celestia and saw its enormous potential to excite and educate school kids and other visitors to the NASA website. He liked Celestia for several reasons. First and foremost, it is free and anyone using it on the NASA website would not have to buy anything. Secondly, it is obviously the best space simulation in existance anywhere and NASA was very keen to introduce something of its quality on their site. Third, it has a large resource of talented folks to custom tailor activities and features for NASA.
Two NASA project managers decided to contract with myself and a few other Celestia members to devise a set of written educational activites that would take the reader on a trip through the Celestia universe .... to the Solar system and beyond. Because I had written a well received lesson plan which is already posted on the Celestia site, they invited me to write the activities for their site.
Over the span of 4 long months, I did so ... with the invaluable help of several of you ... devoting hundreds of collective man-hours to the task. A total of five detailed, step by step "Activities" were written. The subject matter was cleared and approved by NASA in advance. The titles of them are:
1. The Universe - Part 1 - a journey from Earth to the outer edge of the solar system, with a focus on the size of the universe and of space.
2. The Universe - Part 2 - a continuing journey from our Solar System through deep space all the way to the Andromeda galaxy, stopping off at various stars, planets, nebula, black holes, pulsars and galaxies along the way.
3. The Inner Solar System - a detailed tour from the Sun to Mars, covering the inner planets and their moons.
4. The Outer Solar System - a continuing journey from the Asteroid Belt to the comets at the edge of the solar system, stopping at all the outer planets and several of their moons.
5. The Terraforming of Mars - a futuristic journey into the 25th Century to witness the complete human terraforming of Mars into a world of water, plants and oxygen atmosphere.
In addition to the above, several other Activities were/are in the planning stage, to include:
* a trip back in time 4 billion years to visit our early primitive Earth at the time it collides with Orpheus (another young planet) and produces our Moon
* the complete life cycle of a star, from nebula stage through main sequence, nova or supernova, white dwarf or neutron star, pulsar, black hole, black dwarf, etc.
* a tour of the many great spacecraft that populate the Celestia universe, and the space program they represent
* a journey to the fictional worlds made famous by the movies 2001, a Space Odyssey, Star Wars and Star Trek.
* whatever else comes to mind.
Each Activity is a detailed step by step journey of discovery. It assumes that the reader has never used Celestia, and instructs the reader in full on what to do, what keys to press, where to go, what to look at, etc. It also is filled with descriptions and science, explaining as one goes just what they are looking at.
Each Activity is designed to be read and performed by anyone at home or by a school group in a school computer lab. Per NASA's request, the target audience is 5th to about 12th graders in Middle and High School, or any interested lay person.
When I wrote the Activities over a 4 month span, I had many difficult choices to make. Specifically:
A) how long should it take someone to complete an Activity ... step by step. I chose a time frame of about 1 1/2 - 2 hours each, depending upon comfort level and reading speed. This would make it interesting enough without overburdening the reader with too much to handle at once.
B) How much detail would I have to include on how to operate the program? I chose to phrase the Activity as a step by step journey .. assuming that the reader had never seen Celestia before ... let alone learned how to operate it. NASA wanted this and I concurred.
C) Which add-ons would I use ... and if placed on the NASA site for download, how big would that be logistically? I chose to use quite a few add-ons ... since as we all know, they truly boost the enjoyment of the program. In all, they total about 300 MB, uncompressed.
D) Where should I lead the reader in Celestia space and what would they do when they got there? I realised that it would be boring to simply drop on over to each of the planets for a short peek, then move on to another one. I chose instead to do things when we got there ... fly into the atmosphere ... navigate through the rings of Saturn ... chase a spacecraft and try to catch up with it ... witness a double solar eclipse by two moons at once ... watch a near-earth asteroid almost hit Earth, etc. Of course, all this action would make the written instructions quite a bit more complicated than simply including a cel:url for someone to click on... Flying the Celestia spaceship .. controlling time ... centering, following, tracking, etc. all takes quite a bit of written instruction ... all to be done in simple to understand phrasing. However, I felt it was doable and far more enjoyable an experience than simply a static tour.
E) How much background discussion and science should I include? One thing I have learned is that children (and adults) get bored easily if they keep reading narration and are not "doing" something exciting at the same time. A good lesson has to be a tradeoff between using Celestia as a teaching tool, and using it a bit like a video game. Ideally, both can be done seemlessly. In the end, about 1/3 of each Activity is background science and narration, which appears to be a good ratio, based upon student feedback from my own students.
F) Should I include something like a worksheet that a teacher could ask his/her students to fill out as they journeyed through Celestia? After all, grading is important to every teacher who devotes time to a "lesson" like this. I decided to do just that, and I designed each Activity to be accompanied by a 2 page "worksheet" with questions to complete and data to fill in.
G) What level would the text be written for? Middle schoolers prefer one type of phrasing .... high school kids another .. adults a third. I chose a middle ground ... with wording that an 11 year old could understand, but with enough science and Astronomy to satisfy an interested adult.
To make a long story short, with the invaluable and generous help of Chris Laurel, Don Edwards, Jack Higgins, Grant Hutchinson, Selden Ball, David Nessler, a private company in England and others on the forum, we succeeded in creating what I truly feel is a set of five excellent learning Activities. Six entirely new add-ons were designed specifically for this project. In particular, Don Edwards, Jack Higgins and Grant Hutchinson worked with me for three weeks to create an entirely fictional but accurate Mars of the 25th Century. Don drew 19 separate Mars textures alone, and Jack and Grant designed a magnificent set of mirrors that could be used to melt the Martian polar ice caps. A company in England designed an entire animated movie showing people walking around on the terraformed Mars, and even holding hands in the "Celestia Biome" dome.
I have proofed the Activities with four different impartial users (2 students and 2 teachers) and they have loved doing them. I have used them in my own classroom and the word from over 160 of my students has been ("this is so cool") - an "A" rating.
I submitted them to NASA in stages, with lots of drafts, along with an entire data CD of add-on files and accessories. I did have some arguments with one of the project leads over the phrasing of one of the activities, but it looked like we resolved that issue. NASA did pay me a reasonable fee for all five Activities ... but ....
The project appears dead. I have received no further feedback from them. They have neither launched the website nor told me they are emphatically not going to do so. All they have said is that "they may never use the Activities". No explanation of why that might be so has been offered. One of the Project Leads did say that since I own the copyright, I am free to do whatever I like with the Activities, including posting them on the web or selling them to someone else. That is all that he has said. I have sent NASA multiple e-mails, as has Chris Laurel ... to explain to me/us what the problem is, but have received no response .. good or bad. I have not heard from NASA in two months. Even telephone calls are going unanswered.
I can't understand their refusal to explain what problem they appear to have with the Activities or with Celestia, if any. I am left to guess. I have a few theories but ...
That leaves a big decision to make. NASA's initial desire was to open the Celestia universe up to the entire world ... to give school kids and adults everywhere an opportunity to explore our Solar System and beyond, using this most amazing product. I thought then and am completely convinced now that this is not only a GREAT idea, but a necessary one. Many of you are not in education. In my experience, the average person on Earth has no clue what space is really like ... or how big it is. As an experiment, I asked 30 of my High School senior students at random to name the 9 planets in order. Only 18 could do so accurately. Several included names of planets that don't even exist. I also have asked students to choose a size for the universe from 1 million miles to infinity. More than 30% of them thought the entire universe was under 10 billion miles in diameter. These are 18 year old high school seniors, mind you, in a very affluent area of Northern Virginia, living in suburbs of Washington, DC.
They, and the millions of kids like them who don't understand the beauty and magnificance of our universe, NEED Celestia. They also need a simple way to use it, with someone guiding them through some detailed and interactive tours.
I have discussed the idea with Chris and we feel that it may be time to introduce a new level to Celestia ... to create our own "Educational" website. Chris stated that if someone can design the webpage, and I am willing to donate my Activities to it ... he will host it.
I envision a webpage which will include the following:
A) A beautiful background and visuallly appealing layout.
B) Links to not only my Activities, but to any lesson plans or activities from any/all other forum members that wish to contribute. Several of us are educators and I'm sure, can make a wonderful contribution to the site.
C) Multiple age groups ... lessons for middle school through college age to lay adults who simply have an interest in Astronomy.
D) Customized Activity add-ons that can be compressed and downloaded as .exe files, so that once downloaded, the user need not do anything more than click the file name to install all the add-ons ... exactly as the base Celestia product is now downloaded. We might also be able to do something similiar to what Apple Quicktime and other programs do ... download an installer that when clicked, goes out to an FTP site and downloads the remainder of the files.
NASA stated early on that they expected millions of hits to their Celestia site per year. I honestly don't doubt it. Of course, operating our own site would not have the publicity that the NASA site gets, but over time. .. we could surely serve many thousands of students and adults around the world.
Should we do this? I guess it all depends. It is all quite doable and since the Activities I wrote are all complete, we have made a good start. A few months of part time work and such a webpage could become a reality. Would it cause problems? Yes! It would slowly transform Celestia from a great program with a limited distribution, to one that might become world renouned. That will bring a lot of traffic to the Celestia site. It could overload it and force us to find other hosting servers. Is that a good thing? If it introduces thousands of kids around the world to our universe, I think it is
To give you a taste of an Activity, I have modified all of my Activities to remove direct references to NASA and have placed Activity 4 on my website for you to experience (see my link below). It is called, "The Outer Solar System". It requires several add-ons for maximum enjoyment. They include higher end graphics for Jupiter, Neptune and the Pluto/Charon system, rings for all four outer planets, the Voyager spacecraft model/mesh, a near-Earth Asteroid, and a couple of Quicktime video clips that NASA provided, allowing you to enter the atmosphere of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune and pan around. I have placed those add-ons on my site as well, but you will have to modify your ssc file to use some of them. I simply haven't had time to convert them all into Alternative textures or Extras. You can do the activity without them, if needed. If I can find the time, I'll post a modified ssc file on my site to use with the add-ons.
I'd greatly appreciate your feedback. In particular, would any of you great webpage designers be willing to design an educational webpage for Celestia? Some of your pages are absolutely beautiful. We have the talent. Let's use it. Is there anyone else out there who would like to contribute their lessons or teaching aids to the site????)
Awaiting your comments.
Regards,
Frank
of content on CD. Of course, the financial, contractural, copyright and maintenance aspects of that are sure to be complex. (Celestia LLC maybe?)
) But I simply don't have the time at the moment... If it was the summer hols again you could have it up & running in a matter of weeks, if that was necessary!