MoonGazers
"A Package of Virtual, Game-based, and Hands-on Activities"
Turn your students into MoonGazers or become a MoonGazer yourself. Use the Internet, award-winning videogame Selene, and virtual world MoonWorld to learn the solar system’s basic geological processes. Blast away at what will quickly become a full-fledged, pockmarked moon like our own; follow with hands-on activities; and go outside to explore the Moon. Young people and adults develop MoonGazer skills through a sequence of teaching and learning opportunities.
Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME players age 9 and up discover and apply basic planetary geology concepts as they form the Earth’s Moon and change it to replicate its 4.5 billion year history.
http://selene.cet.edu MoonWorld players apply those principles as they work in teams of four conducting virtual field work on the surface of a moon.
http://moonworld.cet.edu Prepared with new knowledge that makes Moon viewing meaningful, learners complete hands-on activities for observing the Earth's Moon within the context of the Earth, Moon, Sun system.
Hands-on Activities
Telescopes and binoculars. MoonGazers work with telescopes and binoculars. Weather permitting, MoonGazers go outside and view the Moon. (Onsite only)
Lunar photography and feature identification. MoonGazers take photos of the moon (weather permitting, onsite only) or use prepared photos for analysis, research, and presentation of findings.
Excite, inspire, and explore through lunar photography. Students photograph the Moon (
Example 1,
Example 2) with a $200 telescope and a $100 camera--from their own driveway or city apartment. Your students can too!
Moon Relative Position Exercise. Navigating the Moon is a matter of feature recognition and transformations (rotations and reflections). Participants model these phenomena.
Rheita Valley. MoonGazers identify a salient feature on a photograph, find it on the Lunar 100 map, visit it in MoonWorld, and research and study its formation and characteristics.
Phases of the Moon Exercise. Trace the phases of the Moon using Bob Crelin's activity. See
here.
Moon Gazers' Wheel. Learn a tool for predicting where the Moon will be seen for a particular phase.
Relative Sizes and Distances. Challenges MoonGazers to predict and model relative sizes of Moon, Sun, and Earth. Challenges participants to predict and model relative distances.
Schedule your MoonGazers event today.
Contact moongazers@cet.edu