The Space Ball Project

This project brings the excitement of launching a satellite to primary and secondary education. How can effective international collaborative education work using the Internet? Consider a model: World War II wrought a revolution in aviation.  Obviously the purpose of WWII was not the development of the aviation industry, but it was a significant result.  Aviation grew to fill a need.  WWII was a "focal actvity". What could create the same revolution in the use of the Internet in collaborative education? The proposed project will have primary and secondary students around the world design and use a large reflective satellite that is visible at night with the naked eye.  [Jump to a description of the satellite with pictures.] The project "needs" distance learning to be effective. The project is large-scale and international. The creation of a real satellite in orbit is the focal activity of the project.  The primary objective is the development of effective collborative distributed education using the Internet.  A secondary objective is to contribute to science, mathematics, engineering and technology education. 

How can many people all make contributions to one project? Large-scale distributed educational collaboration is in development. Some tools exist, such as email, lists, forums and chat tools.  Effective methods of using these tools in a large scope have yet to be defined.  There is a governance problem: How are decisions made in distributed collaborations?  How is governance accompished in multinational collaborations?  Is there any sort of authority?  How are tasks divided?  How tasks coordinated? Are tasks to be allocated based on financial involvement, or are other methods to be used? The methods that students develop in distributed collaborative work are methods that they will take with them into the work place of the future.  Those countries that have a population that knows how to work in such an environment will be able to better participate in global activities.

 Learning can be interesting; in fact is is difficult for learning to occur without interest on the part of the learner.  Real experiences can bring immediacy and excitement to the process.  These are sometimes called "authenic experiences." We can provide new experiences shared by people around the globe based on resources held in common. These resources will be available for generations.  As teachers and learners experiment with new ideas they will foster international communication among learners, teachers and researchers.  This project will allow many countries to contribute, each in their own way and to the degree they wish, without problems of co-mingling of funds.  The project is nominally called the "Space Ball" project.