High-Level Project Summary
The purpose of the project is to introduce middle school students to the capabilities and performance of NASA's JWT through an adventure game. The ultimate goal for the gamer is to launch the telescope into a mission. However, gamer will not be able to launch the space telescope until they complete 3 challenges related to getting to know the parts and functions of the telescope.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
This is an instructional game to introduce middle school students to the capabilities and performance of NASA's JWT through an adventure game. Gamers will be able to launch the telescope into a mission to view and capture images of some parts of the space. However, gamers will not be able to launch the space telescope until they complete 3 challenges related to getting to know the parts and functions of the telescope.The challenges have 3 levels: beginner, intermediate and difficult challenges. For the beginner challenge, students are to put together and assemble the different parts of the space telescope. As a gamer able to succeed in each step in the assembly, the function of the parts will be revealed. Once completed, gamers will be able to move on to the intermediate level. In the intermediate level, gamers will need to correctly click on the part of the telescope described on the game platform. Once clicked, it will reveal a challenge question related to the images captured by the space telescope. Gamers will be able to access a clue vault in which detailed descriptions of the images are provided. The difficult level involves manipulating the telescope to clear blurred images. Once challenges are completed, gamers will be able to launch the space telescope to view images in space.
Space Agency Data
The following open data will be used in the project:
NASA 3D Model: James Webb Telescope
The image of the actual space telescope will be used in the game. Some of the images captured by the telescope will also be used in the game.
Hackathon Journey
This is my first time to join the Space Apps Challenge and really wished to have heard about it sooner.
Although I only got to dedicate a few hours of my weekend in the event, I learned so much from it that I can definitely use in my teaching. The amount of details provided for each challenge are excellent models I can use in creating project prompts for my class. The types of guiding questions in every component of the project making are also useful models for me. As it is my first time to join, with zero background in coding and non very tech savvy, it is really challenging for me to translate my idea into an actual tangible product. I will definitely join a team next time. The collaboration aspect of the challenge is really essential.
References
The following resources will be used in completing the project:
James Webb Space Telescope website: https://jwst.nasa.gov/
NASA's Open Data Portal: data.nasa.gov