NASA – Digital Things!

NASA: Bringing the Universe to America's Classrooms

Mission: Water – VR for classrooms

msvrpromographic3 With classroom support materials newly launched at PBS LearningMedia, Mission: Water is Children’s Media and Education’s first virtual reality project.

It’s a pair of linked apps (one for VR headsets, one for desktop or tablet) offering middle school students a unique experience in the search for water in the solar system. The project includes a parallel experience to allow one player at a time to be an Explorer (wearing a VR head-mounted display).

Students also take turns serving as Mission Control, to collect data using a desktop computer, and as Navigator, guiding the Explorer in the physical space during the game. Players work together to review information and decide the optimal places in the solar system to collect water in support of a fictionalized mission.

The project’s free VR app was officially unveiled by Microsoft as part of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference – here is one high school teacher’s reaction to it: https://vimeo.com/344996078

ISTE_feedback from wgbhkids on Vimeo.

Work in Progress

Road trip to NASA

We got to visit the Goddard Space Flight Center in Baltimore and visit with their Scientific Visualization Studio and Conceptual Image Lab. The trip was part of our work for “Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms.”

We also got to look in on construction of the new James Webb Space Telescope and its massive folding gold-plated mirror array.

For more: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

Funded by NASA*, WGBH’s “Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms” project will develop an extensive collection of K-12 digital resources infused with NASA and WGBH multi-media content to support STEM instruction. These resources will be distributed free of charge through PBS LearningMedia, reaching millions of students and teachers nationally. The material contained in this product is based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award No. NNX16AD71A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Design Squad Nation, Published Work

NASA Launches

We’ve just launched a brand new resource of space-based, hands-on engineering challenges. They are designed for kids in school and afterschool programs, grades 4 to 8.

The site includes original video, activities, and PDFs all presented as 508-compliant resources. Video includes DVS, descriptive video for the deaf or hard of hearing.

WGBH’s Design Squad Mission Solar team includes: Chris, Melissa, Ali, Kal, Christian, Irena, Bill, Caz, Lauren, Dorothy, Ken, Jeffrey, Colin, Alison, and Marisa with additional video from FunnyBoat Productions and Geoff Adams.

Created with generous funding support from NASA.