Activity Description

In the fall of 2005, I asked students in my Introduction to Astronomy to develop astronomy projects during the last few weeks of the semester. My goal was for students to establish themselves as “experts” on a subtopic of astronomy. One group opted to host an open house at The Second Life Planetarium. A year later, I focused the scope of this portion of the course onto two outreach projects. While half of my students developed lectures and activities for nearby Cummings High School, the other half worked in groups to write planetarium show scripts. During the last week of class, they hosted premieres. Hundreds of people logged in during the opening weekend in to watch the shows and to ask the students about their work.

The next semester, I expanded the project to allow students to use the 3-D tools within Second Life to construct astronomy-themed displays. One group built a mock-up of a Meade telescope used in their night labs. Another built a scale model of the solar system. The most impressive display was a replica of the Apollo 11 landing site where Neil Armstrong first walked on the Moon. While I had started this project on my own, the students quickly took ownership of it, working to improve it night and day, even after that project had been graded.