Current Use Of KSP In Schools

[EvilotionCR2]

As a kid,I can tell you.The most fun for them will be collaborating together on a space station.

[Ming]

I love ksp and all but how does it help education wise? I mean it's better than what we are learning now but how does it help you get a job or figure out economics? Yeah the astrophysics are cool and all but it's not useful in life.

I think you've missed the OP's point. It's not the intention of this teacher to replace the entire school curriculum with KSP. Rather, it's to be used as a stimulus for learning collaborative physics problem solving. With that goal in mind there currently isn't a better learning tool, albeit a veiled game, than KSP.

I introduced my 8 year old grandson (I'm 68) to KSP a few months ago and he took to it like a duck to water. I was amazed by how quickly he coordinated the available YouTube tutorials with his building and launching goals. Hell, he even stopped playing COD on his PS3!

So "yes", KSP could easily become an international education phenom. Even though I'm most likely known on this forum as the resident "game lag nag" I can assure you that my opinion about KSP is otherwise 99% stellar (-1% for lag, still a nag, LOL).

P.S. Sixty years difference between me and my grandson and we both love this game. Talk about spanning generations, simply amazing! Kudos Squad!

Edited August 19, 2013 by Ming

[Rakshasa]

I love ksp and all but how does it help education wise? I mean it's better than what we are learning now but how does it help you get a job or figure out economics? Yeah the astrophysics are cool and all but it's not useful in life.

Learning to figure out 'economics' (or rather, finance) and how to get a job are even less useful in life.

Being a guy who did interesting things similar to KSP as a kid while basically giving **** about the 'regular' curriculum and continued doing what I found interesting at university, the 'job-seeking skills' were never needed.

The question really is what kind of future you want for the kids; to be pushing paper at some boring office job, or have the kind of education where they get offers for interesting work due to their skillset and can live in any country of their choice.

[Aqua667]

Wow, I wish you were my teacher! Some of the people I know (including adults that were alive during the Apollo Program) don't even know what a gravity turn is. Most kids I know just think rockets go straight up and *poof* your in orbit. The only time I heard another person under 18 say ANYTHING related to orbital mechanics is some random person saying "Venus rotates retrograde". I'm pretty sure she didn't no wait retrograde means. My parents won't even touch KSP because its "a silly game" and my friend who once played stopped after a week, because it was "too hard".

I can imagine if I come across a KSP course in high school or college:

Teacher: OK class this a Kerbal Space Program, and its a spaceflight simulator

*Explanation of game*

Teacher: One of the most basic-

Me: Give me that! *slaps together Mun rocket* *Lands on Mun* (A interplanetary might give the teacher a heart attack )

Teacher and class: OMG

[Johno]

I believe that I was the first teacher to use KSP in a classroom setting! At least, if anyone else did so before 0.8.5, I didn't hear about it . . Richard Johnson Anglican School, Sydney, Year 10 in 2011 if anyone is recording records!

In any case . . .

I still have a fairly early demo installed on the school's computers (I'd love a site licence for the full game, but at this point that's not a happening thing, and even at the low cost of KSP getting enough copies for the 200+ computers at our school would be pricy!). Unfortunately I have only one lesson allocated each year for this, but when we cover basic Newtonian physics, I take the kids into a computer lab, get them to set KSP going and set them incremental challenges.

Challenge 1: Get a spacecraft into space (arbitrarily defined as 100km up), sub orbital.

Challenge 2: Get a spacecraft into orbit.

Challenge 3: Get a spacecraft into orbit AND THEN LAND.

Challenge 4: I'll let you know when some kid manages challenge 3!

After this lesson, I invariably have at least 2-3 kids who join the KSP community, and after this I'll get kids stopping me in a corridor to say "Landed on Duna. Thought you'd like to know."

[Cartz]

I love ksp and all but how does it help education wise? I mean it's better than what we are learning now but how does it help you get a job or figure out economics? Yeah the astrophysics are cool and all but it's not useful in life.

It doesn't help you if your career aspirations are pumping gas or 'doin the drywall at the new McDonalds'.

Do not undervalue inspiration. If you can inspire two to three kids from a class of 25 into a career in engineering or the sciences with a video game, then you are replicating what is arguably the biggest single benefit from the manned spaceflight program of the 60s and 70s.

The technological dominance which the United States enjoyed for the last few decades (and which is now slipping) was due in no small part to the inspirational effects of the spaceflight programs. Kids grew up watching men ride science to the moon, put robots on mars and send probes to the outer planets which were until then just points of light.... and they wanted to be a part of it.

Now we have fewer science and engineering grads per capita, and the average shuttle launch (before it was outright cancelled) drew less attention then an amateur wrestling event. Low and behold, America's dominance on the world stage is slipping dramatically.

Honestly I have sneaking suspicion that the first person to set foot on Mars is enjoying KSP as we speak.

[SteevyT]

5.) Stoke their interest. Put a grand, ultimate challenge before the class--a mothership capable of orbiting and deploying a manned lander upon every single body in the Kerbol system--and leave them to their own devices unless such a case as described in suggestion 2 comes up.

Sorry to be a slight downer here because this is an awesome challenge, but if the school has computers that can handle this kind of part count, that school has the most powerful computers I've ever seen in a school. My computer begins to struggle with this kind of part count.

[esinohio]

That sort of ship doesn't have to have an insane part count for it to work. While designing it for every planet in the system might be challenging you shouldn't need a beast of a machine to accomplish that, especially if they decide to assemble in orbit.

[Duxwing]

Sorry to be a slight downer here because this is an awesome challenge, but if the school has computers that can handle this kind of part count, that school has the most powerful computers I've ever seen in a school. My computer begins to struggle with this kind of part count.

What esinohio said, and engineering the computers to handle the load--perhaps by setting up some sort of distributed computing system or cajoling the adminstration into granting you time on the mainframe (your 'launch window')--could be part of the challenge.

-Duxwing

[TheSolidRocketBooster]

I sugest a international KSP cahallenge week or something along the lines like that. now the first IRL challenge would be to get a decent amount of computers and such. the first thing that came to me just then was like a F1 crew just circling around the car ( in this case the computer ) and just make minor adjustments or make a new scetchs or something then build it launch it and go back to the drawing board. I'm really tired and you shouldn't take this seriously

[thunderstar]

since ksp came out a lot of young people became interested in space again and its probable that some of them would become study something related to it in the university, i think there's have never have been such interest in space since the late 50's and early 60's

[roosterr]

The current education system in the US is failing. The "old school" still persist in K-12 academia. Now that we are fully enveloped in the Information Age, new ways of teaching and learning (although learning is an inherent and unique instinct or property in most individuals) are available, and for the better as I see it..

People like you are thinking outside the box to leverage the new tools we have for learning at our disposal, and it is less expensive than ever (why is traditional school getting MORE expensive?)

Enough of my thoughts, how about an example:

I work at a State run college (yes I see the waste from the inside, albeit we do have some very forward thinking teachers here and actually we are an "... Institute of Technology" school, luckily).

There is teacher here who does some brilliant things related to his class (Industrial Electricity, wind power, etc.) and outside class (building trebuchet's, sailboats, etc. with his students). He home-schooled his four boys, mostly. With a mostly home-school educations, 3 of his 4 boys went to MIT, the other is at Westpoint.

We too home school our two boys, so I asked the guy what his secret was for the successes of his kids.

His answer: "I never bought them toys that they didnt have to build first"

My six year old plays KSP. Although it is not his favorite, he has been playing since he was 5 and now gravitates to games that are like KSP. Both boys LOVE lego's and are now getting into Minecraft.

Shootemups: I wont deny them in the house, but I certainly dont offer them up and wont encourage it. Most of those games are pretty mindless. And I am a gun owner.

Edited August 20, 2013 by roosterr

[skyace65]

The current education system in the US is failing. The "old school" still persist in K-12 academia. Now that we are fully enveloped in the Information Age, new ways of teaching and learning (although learning is an inherent and unique instinct or property in most individuals) are available, and for the better as I see it..

People like you are thinking outside the box to leverage the new tools we have for learning at our disposal, and it is less expensive than ever (why is traditional school getting MORE expensive?)

Enough of my thoughts, how about an example:

I work at a State run college (yes I see the waste from the inside, albeit we do have some very forward thinking teachers here and actually we are an "... Institute of Technology" school, luckily).

There is teacher here who does some brilliant things related to his class (Industrial Electricity, wind power, etc.) and outside class (building trebuchet's, sailboats, etc. with his students). He home-schooled his four boys, mostly. With a mostly home-school educations, 3 of his 4 boys went to MIT, the other is at Westpoint.

We too home school our two boys, so I asked the guy what his secret was for the successes of his kids.

His answer: "I never bought them toys that they didnt have to build first"

My six year old plays KSP. Although it is not his favorite, he has been playing since he was 5 and now gravitates to games that are like KSP. Both boys LOVE lego's and are now getting into Minecraft.

Shootemups: I wont deny them in the house, but I certainly dont offer them up and wont encourage it. Most of those games are pretty mindless. And I am a gun owner.

as a student in a US high school i can agree. the way we learn and what we learn is ridiculously outdated.

now some of this may come off as whiney "I hate this class!" but please hear me out

-the biggest problem across the board and especially in ELA, is essays. yes writing is important, but there are much better and more aplicable ways to teach it. the only time we ever need to write an essay IRL is on a college aplication and during college till you graduate. something much better and more interesting would be writing a book, or a fake article about something and doing research. both of those teach writing and would actually be usefull past college.

-math, there is so much wrong with the fact that everyone is requiered to learn algebra and even harder math even though the majority of us will not need it in life. and the teaching methods as well for algebra really need to change, thankfully i had a good teacher who showed us some non standard methods with problems that normally arn't taugh and it helps a ton

-science, why is physics requiered? I really wish i could elaborate more but simply, it's not something everyone needs to learn. chemistry needs updated teaching methods.

-foreign language, again the main problem is just how requiered it is. if your good at in than fine keep taking the course, but people who don't get the launguage shouldn't be forced to take the class because if we are doing bad it clearly we won't pick a career choice thar requiers it. and it's not a must have everyday life skill.

also the technology used for teaching isn't updated nearly enough, mainly computers. right now for my school it isn't so bad. but the stuff is starting to get outdated, especially software. though it's better than our last computers that lasted until i was in middle school. I kid you not they were running on windows NT.

there just needs to be better more fun ways of teaching things. hell i learned a ton of history just from playing age of empires 2.

[pxi]

...

When I was in school I had similar thoughts - why do I need to learn X, I've no interest in it, and I'll never use it etc. The fact is, though you may have a fair idea where you want to go in life, you really cannot predict where life will take you, and gaining a broad knowledge base is probably more useful to you in the long run than learning everything there is to know about one specific subject.

I agree wholeheartedly that there are probably better ways to teach though. A lot of teachers are great at the actual teaching part, but extremely bad at illuminating why someone might care to learn any of these things they are so intent on ramming down your throat.

About the age of most computers in schools, I can certainly relate. I went to a fairly decent school in the 90's, we had three sets of computers, an Apple Mac network, a 286 network, and (i kid you not) a BBC Micro network. The problem as I saw it was, any exposure we had to these machines was being taught to use spreadsheets. Just spreadsheets. Even today I gather that this is basically the case - learn to use MS Office, and if you're extremely lucky some HTML.

I felt terribly let down by the computer 'education' I got in that school, as it was the only subject that genuinely interested me at the time. I actually got into trouble for finding out that on the BBC network we had there was a command for viewing the screen of another computer, and used BASIC to run this in a loop, so I could play about programming, and if needed, pull up some other student's screen to make it appear that I was following the class. It took some arguing, but eventually they did see my point of view that this probably demonstrated ability beyond what they were trying to teach me, and considering every single essay I turned in for every class was word-processed, on balance I probably knew what they were trying to teach me. (My handwriting is terrible incidentally.)

[Rakshasa]

as a student in a US high school i can agree. the way we learn and what we learn is ridiculously outdated.

There's many things a student in HS would thing ridiculously outdated, only to appreciate later in life.

-the biggest problem across the board and especially in ELA, is essays. yes writing is important, but there are much better and more aplicable ways to teach it. the only time we ever need to write an essay IRL is on a college aplication and during college till you graduate. something much better and more interesting would be writing a book, or a fake article about something and doing research. both of those teach writing and would actually be usefull past college.

Being able to create a compelling narrative in written form isn't just for your college application, it is the very foundation of all your written communication including forum posts.

The stuff I wrote for First Order Logic classes didn't do much to build my ability to write about generic subjects, nor would I ever write an email in the style of a research paper.

-math, there is so much wrong with the fact that everyone is requiered to learn algebra and even harder math even though the majority of us will not need it in life. and the teaching methods as well for algebra really need to change, thankfully i had a good teacher who showed us some non standard methods with problems that normally arn't taugh and it helps a ton

-science, why is physics requiered? I really wish i could elaborate more but simply, it's not something everyone needs to learn. chemistry needs updated teaching methods.

Both science and math are subjects everyone needs to learn, so stop complaining.

An ape swinging in a tree eating fruits doesn't need to learn science or math. Nor would the ape be capable of appreciating the beauty of the universe we live in, or benefit from the abstract thinking that comes with a good grasp of mathematics.

Sadly too many people seem content with swinging from trees, eating fruit all day.

-foreign language, again the main problem is just how requiered it is. if your good at in than fine keep taking the course, but people who don't get the launguage shouldn't be forced to take the class because if we are doing bad it clearly we won't pick a career choice thar requiers it. and it's not a must have everyday life skill.

Learning a second or third language (currently speaking Japanese fluently as my fourth, despite being bad at languages in HS) alters the way in which you associate words, meaning and your thought patterns. And the point at which (assuming proper study and practice) you are able to switch from merely translating your native language thoughts to words, to instead thinking in the words, idioms and sentence structure of the new language, that represents a significant shift in how you are able to handle languages in general.

Also I disagree that it is not a 'must have everyday life skill'... It's pretty much a must have skill considering where I live now. Or do you aspire to flipping burgers at the local fast food place for the rest of your life?

[roosterr]

as a student in a US high school i can agree. the way we learn and what we learn is ridiculously outdated.

now some of this may come off as whiney "I hate this class!" but please hear me out

-the biggest problem across the board and especially in ELA, is essays. yes writing is important, but there are much better and more aplicable ways to teach it. the only time we ever need to write an essay IRL is on a college aplication and during college till you graduate. something much better and more interesting would be writing a book, or a fake article about something and doing research. both of those teach writing and would actually be usefull past college.

-math, there is so much wrong with the fact that everyone is requiered to learn algebra and even harder math even though the majority of us will not need it in life. and the teaching methods as well for algebra really need to change, thankfully i had a good teacher who showed us some non standard methods with problems that normally arn't taugh and it helps a ton

-science, why is physics requiered? I really wish i could elaborate more but simply, it's not something everyone needs to learn. chemistry needs updated teaching methods.

-foreign language, again the main problem is just how requiered it is. if your good at in than fine keep taking the course, but people who don't get the launguage shouldn't be forced to take the class because if we are doing bad it clearly we won't pick a career choice thar requiers it. and it's not a must have everyday life skill.

also the technology used for teaching isn't updated nearly enough, mainly computers. right now for my school it isn't so bad. but the stuff is starting to get outdated, especially software. though it's better than our last computers that lasted until i was in middle school. I kid you not they were running on windows NT.

there just needs to be better more fun ways of teaching things. hell i learned a ton of history just from playing age of empires 2.

Your points are all valid. "Hating" school can be fixed. There are ways to make it fun. I used to hate school and did very poorly before I was an adult. It was a giant babysitter, pointless, worthless, a waste of time MOSTLY. 5-10% of it was actual learning, AT BEST.

As an adult I have been back to school, almost all trade schools, for IT, and other. I am very successful today. I have less than one year of "college" under my belt. It too was a waste.

My adult education was APPLIED to something that was in use in the present, and much of it fun (software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, etc.). Sure you can get that stuff at a traditional school, but they deliver way too much fluff in the middle and present it all in a very uninteresting way. Transporting your body to a brick and mortar establishment is a waste of time and resources (== money) in MOST cases.

As for games: I have been a long time gamer, mostly sims get my attention. Here is what I have learned from it: how to fly an airplane, WWII History, How to use modern military equipment and tactics (Project Reality: BF2), and now rocket science. All of the above I have bought books and researched these items outside of the game. My children are learning in much the same way, by the introduction of the more stimulating aspects and the next thing you know, whenever they see things in RL that are related to the game, they inquire. Its like trickery, but its working

Edited August 21, 2013 by roosterr