Bud the Teacher

    It turns out that Google Earth-Fever is contagious. 
    After the  success of yesterday’s explorations, my students in my science fiction class were suddenly very curious to know more about the software.  Lots of great questions — but the most common was simply, "Can you show me my house?"
    And I could, so I did.  Took up a little all of our time, but two by two students came up to my desk and took a look at whatever they wanted to see in the world.  Some went foreign — most wanted a close up look at their homes.  (I learned a great deal about where my students live — and the condition of their homes.  Priceless information that will never appear on a Scantron or in a student file.  Yeah — I know their addresses are all in there — but I’ve now seen all of their homes.  Pretty weird.)
    While I was taking students on a tour of our world, the other students were supposed to be reading a story that I assigned.  But they weren’t.  Some were discussing the events of the day, others talking about places they had traveled.  One of those days where conversation was good and important and had nothing to do with the content of my course.
    It was wonderful.  I hope every teacher has had a day or two like today.
    The best part of the day was when one student wanted to know if they had a Google Space.  He’s interested in astronomy, and is quite bright, although perhaps a little unfocused (he’d agree with that term).  I was so glad that I had a copy of Stellarium on my laptop so that I could show him that program. 
    If you don’t know Stellarium, it’s an Open Source astronomy program — pretty much your own personal planetarium.  I quickly loaded it up and blew his mind.  We looked at the stars and the planets.  We made time move forward weeks, years, and centuries at a time, and looked as the stars whizzed by.  We traveled to the other side of the world and saw the sky that we can’t see because the planet is in the way.  We saw the night sky as it will look in the year 9703.
    I’m pretty sure he’ll be downloading that program, and that he’ll look up at night with a bit of authority.  Maybe he’ll look down on the Earth someday, and I can see the reflection of his space ship as it heads off to places unknown.  I sure hope so.  Today was one hell of a day.  Dreams to reach and places to explore. 
    Measure that on a test.