Awards & Nominations
G's has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Finalists Honorable Mentions
The Little Machine and The Big Sun
High-Level Project Summary
The Parker Solar Probe was the first probe to touch the sun. While the journey was significant to space exploration, the success of it is often overlooked by the younger generation, specifically Generation Z. Contrary to other teams, a majority of our group is Gen Z who wants to educate people about significant space discovery. After extensive research and personal knowledge, we found that three popular interests that resonated with Gen Z were gaming, common terminology, and endearing illustrations which were all featured in our project. We believed that creating a game about the Parker Solar Probe using Gen Z terminology and endearing illustrations would actively engage younger audiences.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The purpose of The Small Robot and The Big Sun is to educate the younger generation about the journey of the Parker Solar Probe in an engaging way. The project works as a game and illustration that shows a short summary version in chronological order about the journey of the Parker Solar Probe. There are three minigames and many illustrations that show the different stages of the Parker Solar Probe’s journey. With this project, we hope that the people will complete the game and understand the treacherous journey of the Parker Solar Probe. While the minigames and illustrations cannot properly depict the extent of the challenges the Parker Solar Probe faced, this project provides recognition of the success of the Parker Solar Probe. We also hope that many educators take inspiration off of our projects to effectively educate the younger generations. The coding languages used for this project are Javascript, HTML, and CSS. The software used was Visual Studio Code.
Space Agency Data
We specifically used NASA’s resources to complete this project. This included the article titled “Parker Solar Probe Touches the Sun” and “Parker Solar Probe Encounters Space Dust” as well as the various Youtube videos featured on NASA’s resource website.
Hackathon Journey
Our Space Apps experience was very informative and fun, but we ran into many challenges along the way. Our team was very diverse. We had artists, coders, gamers, and other people with so many different skills. However, what made our team special was that we were all cousins. Most of our team consisted of high schoolers who were just learning how to code. We chose this topic specifically because we were aware of the Parker Solar Probe’s journey and wanted to resonate that to younger audiences since most of our team consisted of people in Generation Z. Our approach in developing this project started out with pitching ideas that we thought were engaging. We all agreed on creating a game because it was a common interest. We then tried to single out which task would be best for each person. For example, Kathryn, who is a skilled artist, drew each scene and character with detail. Cody, someone who had no experience with coding, had to learn through Youtube videos how to create a start and end button. We assigned the task of creating a communication plan, script, and storyboard to our captain Croc because she built the foundation to the game and could dictate where the storyline went. There were many challenges when creating this game because many of us were not experienced coders. We had very big and extensive ideas that we eventually had to scratch because we did not have the time or the bandwidth to complete everything. We’d like to thank one of our cousin’s Mia for cooking us food for the two days we were completing this project because we all met in person at Mia’s house to work in an interactive environment where we could bounce ideas off of each other. We would also like to thank our friend Jacky who is an experienced software engineer who answered all of our questions and assisted us along the way. Overall, the experience was a great learning opportunity for our family and allowed us to bond over our love for gaming and space.
References
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD3Os4H_EOU
- https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1025289037952589854/1025878963958063174/unknown.png
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i2K7uwh124&t=602s
- https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_win_confirm.asp
- https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_css_modals.asp
- https://code-projects.org/maze-game-in-html5-javascript-with-source-code/
- https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_canvas.asp
- https://res.cloudinary.com/dk-find-out/image/upload/q_80,w_1920,f_auto/AW_187527_Sun_Joined_nm3or0.jpg
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API
- https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_positioning.asp
- https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_grid.asp
Tags
#webdev, #sun, #art, #story, #genz, #software, #javascript, #css, #html, #fun, #game, #storytelling, #animation, #puzzle