Taking a quick break from thinking critically to alert parents and teachers to a very cool educational opportunity I had the good fortune to work on earlier this month.
The Aldrin Family Foundation, named after the legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin (one of my heroes) and their K-12 learning arm ShareSpace worked with PCG Education to create a free online course for families who want to introduce their kids to the Apollo moon landings and current efforts to return to the moon and travel on to Mars and beyond.
The course is based on a ShareSpace project-based curriculum that asks kids to learn enough about the lunar environment and how scientists and engineers have figured out how to live and build in space to get them ready to design a visitor center that will allow future tourists from earth to visit one of the original Apollo landing sites.
For you curriculum geeks out there, the course utilizes methodologies for implementing project-based learning online within asynchronous courses at the scale of a MOOC.
For you non-curriculum geeks, the course is a fun and engaging learning opportunity designed to get kids re-engaged with one of humanity’s greatest achievements, one which can help them think beyond getting out of the house, to getting out of this world!
The project got me thinking about a book I read at least a hundred times to my kids when they were growing up. Some of the most evocative images from that book appear below.
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