Thursday, October 25, 2012

Sound System A Go!

We have been fully funded for our sound system. The class is excited to test our the new speakers upon arrival. Thanks to all of our donors!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

$30 to go...

Our class has been lucky enough to get numerous donations for our sound system from New York all the way to California! People and companies, like J. Crew, have been so generous towards our project! We are excited to finally get a sound system worthy of our planetarium. The students really, really deserve it!

With that, we have $30 to go...

Check out our project at
 http://www.donorschoose.org/project/surround-sound-planetarium/838367/

Monday, October 1, 2012

We are on donorschoose.org!

Donorschoose.org

To all our faithful followers, we have started a project fund on donorschoose.org for a new sound system. We are looking to have a 3-way tower speaker funded for our dome.

Last year, we were lucky enough to have a generous student donate his speakers, system, and amps to be used in the dome during the school year. However, with graduation left the speakers.

Right now, we have a set of computer speakers rigged to the DVD player for sound. It is working, but we are looking for something permanent. On a side note, I'd really love to have my computer speakers back!

If you think this project is great and you feel like contributing to our project, please visit http://www.donorschoose.org/project/surround-sound-planetarium/838367/#materials. We currently only have $259 to go.

People have even donated to get others to not grow mustaches...weird, but awesome for our students.

What we've done in the dome this year!

So far this year we have constructed the dome, watched Apollo 13 after finishing a project on the Apollo missions, used Stellarium (a star software) to practice making sky observations, and watched "The Universe: Constellations" as a starting off point for our Lurking in the Shadows Project on constellations.  We are looking forward to many more hours of dome fun before the dome must come down for another year the middle of November.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Fun in the dome

In May we setup the dome for a second time. Students were assigned a chapter in their astronomy books and asked to create a planetarium show for elementary students. Each student group picked a grade level to gear their presentations to. The presentations included content on their chapters, videos, animations, and music. The students did a great job hosting their shows. Elementary students also rotated through stations geared for their grades on light. It was a pleasure watching both astronomy and elementary students engaged in the learning/teaching process.