Stellarium Project

• What did you learn about Stellarium or Celestia?
• I learned that Stellarium can be used in a very similar manner as one would used a planetarium. I really like how you can adjust the sky for different locations and change the dates. I also like how you can do a time lapse of the sky.

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  Section of the Night sky on day that I was born. Includes a few of my favorites in Draco and Ursa Major and Ursa Minor,

  
  
• What instructional problems could you use this technology for?
• I use Stellarium to complement a unit on astronomy. I would use Stellarium to teach about different constellations and navigation in the night sky. I would also take time to point out some of the stars that are the brightest and explain why they are so bright. 
• What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching? List the instructional standards and a detailed explanation of how you would conduct the activity (e.g. the order of events that you or your students would do to be able to accomplish the learning objective)



A view of tonights sky that includes my favorite winter constellation, Orion



A view of the far off planet of Jupiter

• One item that I would use this technology for would be to teach students navigation using the night sky. One of the common misconceptions that I would seek to correct is that the constellations change given the season. I would give my students time to explore the nighttime sky using Stellarium with a list of constellations to learn and be able to distinguish. I would break the constellations up using the seasons. Then I would test my students by bringing up the night time sky and pointing out a constellation for them to identify.
• Another item that I would teach my students would be the motion among the night sky.  I would want them to be able to observe the movements of the planets. I want for my students to understand that the word planet actually means wanderer. This is because planets have an irregular motion in the nighttime sky. To teach my students about this, I would have my students plot a planets location at the same time each night and form a plot of the planets position and discuss the meaning of it. 

Personal Technology Projects

The technologies that I wish to learn include LoggerPro and Stellarium. I have just started to be introduced to LoggerPro in my practicum class and can see that there are a lot of valuable uses to it. I want to be able to learn the technology so that I can incorporate it into my classes. I think that Stellarium will be a fun and potentially useful too. I think that it would be a lot of fun to end a school year with a short unit on astronomy and thus be able to use a program such as stellarium.

This video appears to be very well done. The video itself does a very good job of giving credit where it is due in terms of the experiments and who made them. In that aspect, it is very good. The thing that I question is whether or not the person who loaded the video had the rights. I am suspicious that they didn't. If they didn't, then, they are copyright violations as they are using more than 10% of the original video.

 

In this segment of the video, there is music that is playing that doesn't have credit given. Now in the credits of the show which are in a different section, there may very well be the credits to the music, so it doesn't infringe copyrights. I would question the validity of the person who uploaded this video though. The video does not appear to belong to them. They state that no copyright infringement intended and that they were only uploading for entertainment purposes. Well entertainment purposes are not covered under fair use, so I believe that this video is actually a copyright violation.

Website

I have added a scientific calculator app that students can use to help them with their homework. I have also created The Moving Man activity for students in High School Physics. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem in the embed code for the simulation, so I have included the link instead. I have also included a page with some useful links for Physics students.

Website Is up

I am just putting some of the finishing touches on my website. My website is found at https://sites.google.com/site/mrmackprangsphysics/
I have created a syllabus and calendar for two different courses. I have created a High School Physics course along with an AP Physics Course. I have also included a google map of the High School that I am teaching at(theoretically speaking of course).