Celestia

I played with the celestia software over the last few days. Initially I was furstrated with the installation process. I've been doing all of my work for this program on my mac. When I went to download the mac version I got it downloaded fine but had no clue what a .dmg file was. I googled it and found some kind of software that would help me unload this file onto my computer. I still had some problems. I was frustrated so I looked in blackboard and saw that tara had some problems she fixed with downloading the low res version. I decided to download the windows low-res version on my pc since there wasn't one for the mac.

I noticed my feelings of frustration mounting. I also realized that this is probably what many teachers feel about "good" software that they have problems downloading, immediately their views are tainted and those are hard to overcome. Things like, if it's this hard, it better be worth it, crossed my mind. ALso, being a fairly tech savvy person, I noticed my doubts mounting as well about myself. Maybe I'm not as savvy as I thought, thoughts like these crossed my mind. The other thing that crossed my mind was, macs are supposed to be easier. Although I eventually figured out the mac install, it was by no means easy and required many more steps than the pc install. This was interesting, I think there are probably other mac formats that would be easier to install such as stuff it or something.

It occurred to me while I ran into the poor performance on my pc (which as I said is quite old but functions on most od my other programs pretty well) it occurred to me that although this seems like it could be an awesome tool for school and particularily earth science classes, I don't know if most schools have the specs on their computers to do this program any justice. Again, clearly this should be something education software companies consider, which I'm sure they do. But it drove home how important this would be especially for the "RE-purchase" of any software or renewals.

When I eventually got to playing with the program, my older windows machine did it NO justice at all, the graphics (even on the low res version) were awful. The mac program definately was cool. I spent some time going through the recommended "cookbook" and that got me oriented with the program. I also ran the demo. After doing this, I felt like I had enough skills to play around a little with the program some on my own. I tried to engage my 3 year old he was a little interested although I realize this was kind of out of his league. I did think it was very cool, however.It triggered a memory I have of my 8th grade earth science class where we studied stars and one extra credit assignment we could do was set up a camera in our backyard where we delayed the exposure of the big dipper to see the changes over time. It was very impressionable for me and something that stuck with me. Looking at that now, I realize that engageing me in that process where I go to my own backyard with my dad, figure out the camera, set it up and then develop the pictures was monumental in my science education. I can remember it like it was yesterday, and a very pleasent memory, I felt so mature and smart and it was a cool bonding thing I did with my dad too. Thinking about that makes me remember how fun I thought it was to do that, and I didn't really think about the fact that I was learning.