Personal Technology Projects: Stellarium and Celestia

I Love teaching physics, but astronomy is really my passion. However there are a lot of misconceptions that students have about our universe, and correcting them can be quite a challenge. These tools are wonderful for that.

What did you learn about Stellarium? Stellarium is an earth view based astronomy tool. Its basically a free version of Starry Night Deluxe. The navigation system has a steep learning curve so you would need to teach students how to navigate it. It is very flexible as it provides information about the entire night sky across the entire world, and has the ability to give accurate representations in time forwards or backwards.

What instructional problems could you use this technology for? This could be helpful in determining the cause for the phases of the moon. Many children think that crescent moons and new moons are caused by the shadow of the earth. Using the program you could see views like this:

This shows the moon in the night sky, a

common occurance that the kids should have experienced by now.

This shows a zoomed in view of the full moon

We have gone forward in time and the moon is now in a crescent phase. (hmm... its getting hard to see it because of all the daylight. I wonder why? :) )

Oh well we can just turn of the atmosphere! That gets rid of that pesky daylight problem.

But what is this? a new moon right next to the Sun! Hmm.... So that means it cant be the earth's shadow. So who's shadow is it?

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching? This activity meets the 6th grade standard that:

Students will understand that the appearance of the moon changes in a predictable cycle as it orbits Earth and as Earth rotates on its axis.

Another activity could be tracking the motion of the international space station, and predicting when it will fly in our field of view. We could then have a

late night activity to see if we can catch a glimpse of it. This hits the 2nd objective in the 4th standard of 8th grade core curriculum: Examine the forc

e exerted on objects by gravity.

Now for Celestia:

What did you learn about Celestia?

Celestia is an incredibly cool 3-D space exploration program. It is filled to the brim with the latest information on the exact cuardinates of stars, planets and galaxies. not really designed for surface view, it is more for getting a perspective on the form and scale of the universe.
What instructional problems could you use this technology for?

Helping kids really understand the size and scope of the solar system.

Another is to help them see why Pluto really isn't a planet.

like see here:

Here is the ever famous Hale - Bopp Comet up close and personal. Lets zoom out and take a look at its orbit around the sun.

Hale-Bopp's orbit is shown in red. The other orbits are other comets in our solar system. You can see how they are incredibly elliptical orbits with no real correlation with eachother.

When we compare that to the orbits of the planets we see that planet orbits are very different. The planets are all basically in the same plane and have roughly circular orbits.

Now lets compare this to Pluto and the other dwarf planets. Their orbits are a little less circular than planets, but not as eliptical as comets. They don't have tails like comets do, but they don't orbit on the same plane that planets do. thus we needed a separate category for these comet-like planets, so the dwarf planet category was born.

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching?

Again the above activity would be wonderful for teaching the third standard for 6th grade science: Students will understand the relationship and attributes of objects in the solar system.

Another Standard Celestia would be great in helping kids understand is 6th grade science #4: Students will understand the scale of size, distance between objects, movement, and apparent motion (due to Earth's rotation) of objects in the universe and how cultures have understood, related to and used these objects in the night sky.

Which can easily be done with just playing around with the program while taking note of the data on the side.

All in all I am incredibly excited for these programs.

Personal Technology Project Ideas

There are three technologies that I want to learn how to use, probes/sensors with Logger Pro, stelarium, and celestia.

Copyright Project

For my teaching with technology class I have to explain the proper use of the "fair use" clause of the copyright law in instruction. The fair Use clause says that if the use of the copyrighted material is in the best interest of the country, that it can be used without payment or consent. There are some massive limitations to that, and it isn't a catch all that allows the rights of producers to be ignored, but it does allow for the use of materials in public criticism, comment, news, teaching, scholarship, and research. This means that as an instructor, as long as I am using material directly for teaching and not for entertainment purposes, and that I am not going to diminish the value of any of the things I am using, that I can use them in my classroom to teach without the producer's consent or without payment. This is very helpful. However, there are guidelines, such as not using too much of a single work, and making sure that all materials have references so you can find the original material. Also, the originals have to be legally acquired. It is really a fascinating subject and has a lot of parts to it.

For this project I have to analyze two videos on the principle of fair use. The two videos I have chosen are 1)The American Form of Government 2) Symphony of Science "We are all connected."

I love this video. I wish more people knew what it teaches.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an educational video meant for instruction, thus it falls under the intent of "fair use." The pictures used of historical events, documents, paintings, so on and so forth all are incredibly old and can be thus used. Any song snipits were very short and used only for effect, video footage also lasted no more than seconds per clip. Thus the guidelines are followed very well. The only thing that I find at fault with this video is lack of citation. This video needs a credits page to be completely in harmony.

This is another one of my absolute favorites. The idea of how everything is intertwined is an incredibly awe inspiring and life changing one.

This also falls under the category of fair use because of its instructional intent. Though more entertaining than the first video, it is defiantly a movie that is educational in value. This video does better in at least giving credit for quotes, but lacks source citing on all the multi-media clips. This also needs a credits page. The music is an original composition, and is published on youtube by the author, so no worries there, but like the other video it needs a credits page.