KSP in a High School Physics Class

[Spaceisbeautifulul]

Hold on, i'm currently driving to your school so I can give every student in your class the Luckiest kid in the world award

Dido, let me get my ribbons.

[FizziksGuy]

And with one day left, we finally have our first non-Kerbin landing on Duna, which included a manual docking and return to Kerbin!

http://aplusphysics.com/community/index.php/topic/1867-ksp-harbres-research/page-2

Thanks for all the help folks, some re-tooling and tweaking for next year, but I'd consider this project a great success!

[Ted]

And with one day left, we finally have our first non-Kerbin landing on Duna, which included a manual docking and return to Kerbin!

http://aplusphysics.com/community/index.php/topic/1867-ksp-harbres-research/page-2

Thanks for all the help folks, some re-tooling and tweaking for next year, but I'd consider this project a great success!

That's awesome to hear, pass along our congratulations on the mission!

[WhiteWeasel]

Man I wish my high school was that epic. Kinda like this I heard something about the (U.S. not korean) military having people play starcraft to teach them micromanagement. However I just heard that, any citations or articles if would be nice if someone could find them.

[Invalid]

All schools need to use KSP for space exploration.

[acealeam]

That is so cool! Do we have a winner yet?

[Fuller]

Hi Dan,

I saw your interview in PC Gamer about a week ago and just wanted to say thank you for making me aware of this game. I'm a science technician in a UK school and have started an after school club in the last few weeks of term to teach rocket science using Kerbal. Your project brief was a real inspiration and I'm really looking forward to taking this further next term. My students absolutely love this game and I think it's going to be really big in the educational market. Do you think we could start some kind of educational thread here in the Kerbal Forums for like minded teachers who want resources or a place to share ideas? Is that possible please any admins who are reading this? I'm putting together a few ideas myself and we're using Kerbal next week in a bottle rocket design challenge. I'll post the video on youtube and link it here.

[KasperVld]

Hi Dan,

I saw your interview in PC Gamer about a week ago and just wanted to say thank you for making me aware of this game. I'm a science technician in a UK school and have started an after school club in the last few weeks of term to teach rocket science using Kerbal. Your project brief was a real inspiration and I'm really looking forward to taking this further next term. My students absolutely love this game and I think it's going to be really big in the educational market. Do you think we could start some kind of educational thread here in the Kerbal Forums for like minded teachers who want resources or a place to share ideas? Is that possible please any admins who are reading this? I'm putting together a few ideas myself and we're using Kerbal next week in a bottle rocket design challenge. I'll post the video on youtube and link it here.

This should certainly be possible; Squad supports the educational use of KSP in many ways and actually creating a forum here would not be a bad idea providing that there is enough demand ofcourse. Until such times feel free to create a thread

[msyblade]

I would suggest leaving the entire stock parts library accessible to them. It will foster creativity, and you will get much more variation in their rocket builds. I fear that if you limit them to a few basic parts, you will get 15 ships, very similar in nature. Then it becomes a game of skill for them. There is an "intent" behind every build, and having the tools available fosters that creativity. (Not to mention how often you are wrong when guessing/learning.

[alacrity]

OK, ... So Inoticed this thread a while back, when I was deep in design efforts and other random crazyness with the docking ports (Who really needs 27 space stations... This guy!!!)

Now I see it pop back up and got a grin on my face. It is now version 20.2 and I have to admit... there is a bunch of stuff I never did that is on that list...I know. In fact depending on the grading scale, and the actual penalty level for Kerbal mauling I would have lucked out with a solid (or not so solid) C on this project. Unless the space station thing is repeatable for credit... 27 space stations, baby.

I am going to make it personal mission to get through all these now, but in a community level I think we should come up with a few more advanced milestones and sticky this thread over to Challenges for a beginners Challenge. (The advanced milestones would replace the essays... because I still don't like essays).

Just to note For my attempts the rules on mods will be a little different.

1) I will be using a lot of mods (B9, KAS, ISA Mapper, Kethane 5.1, Firepitter, Nuke, Quatum struts, KW Rockets, maybe lazers)

2) I have Mech Jeb, but will limit myself to info screens (Orbital flight info, Ship mass info stuff like that... no flight asssistance applications)

3) I will catalog all deaths in development, and crashes for others to berate me over (I think ridicule is a good replacement for loss of grade points)

4) Repeated mission profiles have to show relevance to count for more points... 27 space stations don't count 27 times unless EACH ONE can be shown to be truly needed/useful to the overall program.

All in all I think most of these things should be attempted/completed by all of us at least once. With mods or without. I myself have so many tested to death launch models that I basically always use Mech Jeb to hoist them to orbit now, because I can't be bothered. I think it is time to get back to basics.

Alacrity Fitz

[FizziksGuy]

Hi Dan,

I saw your interview in PC Gamer about a week ago and just wanted to say thank you for making me aware of this game. I'm a science technician in a UK school and have started an after school club in the last few weeks of term to teach rocket science using Kerbal. Your project brief was a real inspiration and I'm really looking forward to taking this further next term. My students absolutely love this game and I think it's going to be really big in the educational market. Do you think we could start some kind of educational thread here in the Kerbal Forums for like minded teachers who want resources or a place to share ideas? Is that possible please any admins who are reading this? I'm putting together a few ideas myself and we're using Kerbal next week in a bottle rocket design challenge. I'll post the video on youtube and link it here.

Thrilled to hear it's getting use outside just my little sphere of influence, but the real credit goes to all the great folks on the forums who have guided me in this endeavor! Thanks gang!

Definitely up for some online collaboration -- would love to hear how it works out in your class. Once your project is complete, perhaps we could find a time to talk and maybe try to compile our learnings to improve future efforts on both sides of the pond?