World Wide Telescope - a magic tool for astronomy teaching

The World Wide Telescope was launched by Microsoft this week and it is as amazing as its pre-publicity. This little introduction gives an inadequate idea of how good it is. The real thing is much better than this: sharper and larger.

You need to download it (PC only) and it gets supplementary views online as required.

This is yet another compelling argument for the forthcoming domination of classrooms by the internet and computers in general. Some of the publicity for the WWT talked about this application changing the way people view their place in the universe. That is not an exaggeration, simply because very few people have a view of how we fit in the universe. This starts to provide a perspective that is a self directed journey. A constructivist learning journey?

How exciting is this for a teacher who has been trying to introduce students to astronomy, and who now can take students on a journey that was unimaginably by astronomers a decade or two ago?

Tags: showme constructivism astronomy digital storytelling creativity
Posted at 11:09AM May 29, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[1]