NASA Launches Educational Website 74
Rob writes to tell us Computer Business Review magazine is reporting that NASA has launched a new educational site targeting children in kindergarten through fourth grade. From the article: "The website aims to appeal to both parents and educators wishing to help develop children's knowledge in subjects such as science, technology and mathematics. [...] 'Our goal with the Kids' Club is to provide a medium that encourages children's interest in exploring the subjects important to developing early skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,' said Angela Phillips Diaz, NASA's acting assistant administrator for education."
Does this work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I don't appreciate NASA attempt, but does anyone know of any studies showing the effectiveness of computer games on learning? Both my experiences as a student and now as a science teacher tell me they are a worst of both worlds solution. Too much reading/obvious attempts to educate to make a fun game, far too shallow content to make a good lesson.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Does this work? (Score:2, Funny)
That's exactly who I want teaching my kids how to stay on schedule. The federal agency that can't get a space shuttle in the air more than once every couple of years.
While we're at it, let's have the DoD and the Pentagon start an educational website to teach our kids how to shop around and get the best deal on toys.
Re:Does this work? (Score:2)
Two Words... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Does this work? (Score:2)
Does anyone know of any studies showing the effectiveness of sitting in rows in a room with a teacher and blackboard at the front of the class on learning?
Hey, thats a hypothesis
I was a geek when I was a kid and did not know it, and my dad one day brought home a few of NASA Spinoff publications. They still exist, info here: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/ [nasa.gov]
I believe I had 1976-1979 or so. Its an annual publication, and I
Re:Does this work? (Score:2)
Re:ah, to be young again (Score:5, Funny)
* To harness the power of the sun (sorry ants).
* Set both your hands on fire making rocket fuel.
* Discovering electrolysis in your bedroom (sorry Ma, I was seeing if it was explosive).
* Gravity testing with a homemade parachute (sheet (ow!)).
* Inertia testing 101 (train vs tree).
* How much dynamite did it take to fell a tree? (not much).
* Why are elements red? (to support the people who make bandages of course).
I wanted to be either a Ranger, an Astronaut, or a Scientist.
I predict this site will bomb. There appears to be no explosives.
NASA? (Score:1)
Re:NASA? (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pushing children toward private ventures (Score:2, Insightful)
Very idealistic. However, few organizations have a purpose of putting themselves out of business.
Re: (Score:2)
Profitability of trip to Pluto (Score:1)
Why?
The usual answer (actually, speculation) is that there is some raw material there that we need, and as the cost comes down the trip will be worth it. What? Coal? Oil? Diamonds? Dilithium?
But if the cost has come down to that point, what raw material could we possibly need or want so much to make the trip worth our time, if nothing else?
Tourism? On Pluto?
Re:Profitability of trip to Pluto (Score:2)
Sure, as soon as Disney gets Plutoland built.
Re:Pushing children toward private ventures (Score:1)
Re:Pushing children toward private ventures (Score:2)
I'm not sure how many people know what goes on at NASA, but they have already put themselves out of business.
NASA is now more or less a mismanagement organization. Give me a second before you stop reading and hit the flamebait button. NASA for the most part is old. Very old in terms of technology. Most of the equipment they have is 20 to 40 years old. Because of the 8-10 year budget threats, they don't have
Re:Pushing children toward private ventures (Score:2)
{
print "We have to have the space shuttle because how else are we going to fly people to the space station! We have to have the spacestation because otherwise the space shuttlewouldn't have anywhere to fly to!"
}
Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:5, Insightful)
It aims to teach space science and technology through playing several interactive games and quizes. For example, at the highest level (5th), you are asked to "guide a comet" by getting nine trivia questions about the Solar system. Ok, it's probably good to know that it takes 365days for Earth to orbit around the Sun. But would that be truly thought provoking? (it might teach kids a method of elimination by logic, I admit).
I just wonder what these people think as "scientific" education here. Knowing some stupid trivia about planets so important to become a scientist or an astronaut?
Teaching science requires more than trivia or memorization games. The key is to make students think with logics. Maybe logic is too much for K-5, well, ok, then let them discover something by playing instead. Like gravity! The kids don't need to know the law of gravity. Just create a java applet that let you play with the mass of the Sun and let the kids adjust its mass to see what sort of effect the planets would see. Or, do the orbiting rocket. Let them "see" what happens when a rocket vehicle tries to catch up on another rocket ahead of it. By "catching up" the rocket behind the second one ignites its booster to "move faster". Let the kids see what would happens to the rocket when it's gone faster. It'll show them the intricacy of astrodynamics!
The main problem on these NASA's EP/O is that the director / designers of the site often do not know what "science" is. I don't mean to single out Angela Diaz (wife of Al Diaz, who got canned from Goddard/NASA, I believe), but she's been known as manager, not exactly a teacher. Give real teachers the budget and make a better site than this, I would dare say!
[I apologize for my rant. I'm just tired of these craps NASA produces these days.]
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:1)
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if this site was put together by a placement student (intern) from a multimedia design course, who didn't seem to have much to do at NASA and someone gave them this project to do. The site is full of so many basic HCI mistakes that it makes me wonder if it wasn't even an intern but a high sc
Just create a java applet... (Score:2)
I vaguely remember seeing some orbital sim applets on some university web site. Maybe there is some reason why they can't be snarfed by NASA. Or maybe the NASA folks don't think kids can hack this stuff. Maybe I'll start a new web site to gather up this stuff. Who's with me?
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:1)
I loved Physics in High School, wanted to major in physics in college, but after half a semester I understood I was not cut out for that science. Instead I found my passion in programming and have made a good care
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:2)
* They have no money to launch missions
* They have no (significant) money for R&D
* They have no money to hire the brains it takes to overcome problems they face
* They have no money to hire managers that can bring in projects successfully
Even though they remain operational they are kind of crippled. They just don't have the money to do the stuff they were created to do. So all t
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, wtf is up with missions to the moon and mars? Mars is an interesting destination, but for robots. People whine about how a human being there could do so much more, but they forget that the robots we've been able to send so far all had to be EXTREMELY tiny and simple because they had to fit into a very tiny payload. If you were actually going to send human being
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously someone who didn't go through the American education system. The whole system is like that and I hated school because of it. 13 years of boring busy work. I distinctly remember my first experience with school (preschool) and how incredibly moronic I thought it was for us to sit around and cut pictures out of a magazine that related to some topic. The whole time I was thinking "What, do they think we are stupid?" I was 5 or 6 years old at the time and it was a harbinger of things to come...
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:2)
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly? Most would probably say either, "I don't know, I've just always been fascinated by ___," or, "Well, one day I kind of luck
Re:Games, not necessarily scientific education (Score:2, Interesting)
on the "kids'" homepage there is also a weird video of Dubya doing a live linkup with the last Shuttle Crew[?] which actually depresses me even more. he waffles off some crap about the "importance of their mission" and "how proud the folks are", then the mission commander spiels off the latest BS NASA press release.
NASAs manned mission has sadly lost its way and is rapid
Re:Who's signing off on the content? (Score:1)
For more on administration's influence over NASA, see:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/George_Deutsch_resign
Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:1)
I recall at least 2 occasions when flash amuses and informs all the 6 year old adults here on slash.
(for the curious, the hitachi perpendicular song [hitachigst.com] and the Super Villians Linux fembot thingy [ubergeek.tv](link appears dead atm though))
But remember... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sid Meier's Civilization (Score:2)
Catestrophic climate change could be the basis of, or a feature in, an excellent game.
In Sid Meier's Civilization [wikipedia.org], if you didn't carefully manage your power plants, you could easily toast the planet. It was great for gameplay, as even if you had defeated all military and economic foes, you still had to contend with the detritus of your success.
Re:But remember... (Score:2)
NASA? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but isn't it the school's job to get kids interested in developing early skills in these things? Why are NASA, an organisation with the mandate to perform aeronautical and space activities [nasa.gov], filling in for the education system?
Re:STFU Amerinigger (Score:2, Funny)
I see the NASA story has brought out all the rocket scientists.
Re:NASA? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because it's 0, a prerequisite to make 1-9 possible in the long run.
Re:NASA? (Score:1)
I mean, jesus christ, you are basically criticizing an organization for trying to educate simply because they are not a school. Why?
"Kids' Club" (Score:1)
What an original name. Kudos, NASA.
-:sigma.SB
NASA Launches Educational Website (Score:5, Funny)
What a worthless educational website. (Score:4, Interesting)
Teaching this stuff isn't that difficult without using a website anyway. My elementary education was sufficient that by sixth grade I was very interested in astronomy, and was able to use the Internet to satisfy my curiosities; there were already flyby pictures of Io (Saturn moon) and from Venera 13 (Soviet Venus Lander), IIRC, on JPL's website in 1994 or 95. I didn't have Internet access in elementary school (and neither did my school), but I do vividly recall some astronomy projects I did in 2nd or 3rd grade; it went a lot deeper than "the sun gives off heat and light to the Earth, but Neptune and the Moon do not".
If NASA wants to get involved in education, they should actually get involved with schools. Think how other effective government sponsored education campaigns for reading & whatnot have worked. Think about how companies like TI, Yamaha, or Apple have gotten involved with math, music & computers. And they manage to make money in schools! Could NASA not benefit from some other funding besides taxpayer dollars? Especially since there's already other taxpayer dollars delegated to education...
Either way, a cheesy flash site with multiple-choice edutrivia is pretty worthless. Saving for telemetry engineers or something would have been a more worthwhile way to spend the money.
Re:What a worthless educational website. (Score:1)
I have children - one of whom is in the target age range and who is playing Zoo Tycoon as the LOWEST (age) level game he plays with any real interest, which includes long descriptions of animals, their group habits, constructing their habitats, and whether they're headed towards extinction or not. It also is pretty demanding on the budget level, which helps my child learn that everything has a price, and sometimes LOWERING the entrance fee is more profitable than raising it. He's learned some ancient myth
NASA Rocket Science 101 (Score:5, Funny)
What About NASA TV (Score:1)
- an astronaut spending half an hour getting ready to pee in space
- demonstrationg of an astronaut writing on a paper in space
- an astronaut in space flies around in zero gravity
- an astronaut approaches another astronaut in space and they play with water in zero gravity
- an astrounaut talks with earth control staff about football
- an astrounaut reads shuttle equipment manuals in spac
Re:What About NASA TV (Score:1)
Astronauts once selected will train for a particular mission for about 10 months or much longer - it's not that unusual, especially when EVAs are involved, to start training a year and a half for a mission. So why should they need to read equipment manuals/checklists in space when they should have everything memorized?
The answer is safety. NASA strongly discourages its astronauts from memorizing things like checklists and other safety c
NASA Looks More Like FEMA These Days (Score:1)
NASA, stop focusing only on elementary school kids (Score:4, Insightful)
I think NASA should focus much more on grades 9-12, where the goal actually is to prepare oneself for college and ultimately a future career. This is the critical time when we're loosing interest.
Are they required to do this? (Score:2)
Just take a look, the Defense Intelligence Agency [dia.mil] has a "kids' site", the CIA has a kids' site, the [cia.gov] NSA [nsa.gov] has a website, and even the State Department [state.gov] has a kid's site where you can learn exciting things about SecState Rice meeting Elmo...
Sure, some of them have a little bit of recruiting-type material on them, but most
Obligatory European Link (ESA) (Score:2, Informative)
ESA Kids [esa.int] (in 6 languages
ESA Highschool [esa.int]
Good idea but GCompris still better (Score:1)
BBC site rocks (Score:2, Informative)
When I first saw the planet jigsaw puzzle(the first link), I searched in NASA sites and could not find a single site. Each lab seemed to have a different page of their own but didn't find them interesting.
My kids camp out on the prehistoric games of animal [bbc.co.uk]
Nasa website (Score:1)
[ducks]
NASA Launches Educational Website (Score:2)
An effort, but is it useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Older kids aren't stupid. They see their techie parents losing jobs and having their salaries cut because people half a world away work for a lot less and have a better work ethic in most cases. Given those facts, would you work your butt off in school and grad school for years on end to end up with a low-paying job, if you could find one?
2. Kids also see that getting an MBA or a law degree is an instant ticket to success with much less hard work. Against that, science doesn't have a chance with anyone but the most hardcore types.
3. For whatever reason, schools don't seem to be attracting the world's best teachers. I had some really excellent math and science teachers in my school career who got me interested in the material. Unless you have a really good teacher in an intro. science class, you'll never enjoy the subject.
4. I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people now, but the trend towards religious fundamentalism in the US really hurts science as well. Religion and science don't mix. When enough of the religious crazies get into powerful positions, projects don't get funded. Examples of the problem are the whole evolution debate, stem cell research, etc. Until we get a moderate base of elected officials in office again, this will continue.
I don't know what it will take to fix the problem, but anything that can be done is better than nothing!
NASA self promotion (Score:2)
If the Shuttle and ISS programs weren't on the verge of collapse, this might be allowable. But NASA needs focus, not marketing.
Education (Score:1)
Educational Global Climate Modeling (Score:1)
Kid's report (Score:1)
From the Outside Looking In. (Score:2)
I only looked at the first one, but this quiz/game appears to attempt to get the student/player to be able to ident