Space teachers! I'm working on an idea that could revolutionize space education and would really love your help.

[ryanovas]

A couple months ago I participated in the NASA Space Apps Challenge which is basically a competition to build an app or website over the course of a weekend based on pre-set challenges. My team and I chose this challenge:

"Although a typical clear night sky may seem relaxing, in reality it is always restless. Various phenomena are taking place unexpectedly around the clock in every part of the sky. News and information on these cosmic surprises are not announced in one place. Your challenge is to create a central place for information and visualizations of these sky phenomena."

We created a quick prototype over the weekend that connected to databases that NASA provided and was to display these events and plot them in Google Sky (you can actually see the prototype here ). We ended up not only winning the Toronto competition, but globally as well! We got a lot of publicity online, and based on the reaction decided to actually try and build something around our idea.

After lots of hmming and hahing we decided to build a 3D model of the universe (see this really cool project for an example of what I mean by that) that would go beyond just the Milky Way, and also display cosmic events in realtime. On top of this platform, we want to build educational software that can be used by teachers to enhance space education in the classroom (and outside!).

The idea is that teachers would have an administrative panel in which they could select from a number of pre-built, interactive lessons/games/tests in order to build a curriculum that matches what they are required to teach in their class. The teacher can also monitor their students progress from inside their admin panel. All the learning would happen inside our 3D universe and allow students to actually see and interact with objects in the solar system and beyond.

Right now we are in the process of raising money to build this project, and we are looking to get information and opinions from teachers who currently (or recently) have been involved in space education. If you have 5min, could you please answer the questions we have here?

If you have any advice for us other than what we asked in the form, please share. Can never get enough advice

Thanks so much!

Edited July 25, 2014 by ryanovas

[fiveworlds]

Those are really cool. You are familiar with most of the basic openGL etc concepts I hope. I saw three that I liked so. The first is an interactive bat mobile https://www.batmanarkhamknight.com/en_US/batmobile. The second is a car picker of a number of different cars and you can change the color etc http://carvisualizer.plus360degrees.com/threejs/ the third is a three dimensional earth with cities etc http://www.webglearth.com/#ll=11.47397,-1.65209;alt=5978915