PBL: Homesteading Mars Project

Homesteading Mars Project Information

Project Title: Homesteading Mars

The following is our "Cliff Note" version of the full project, meant to provide you with a quick overview of its main features and the standards and content it covers. The complete project specs and related resources are available at this website: http://students.itec.sfsu.edu/itec815_s99/mdeschamp/mdstudents.html

Created by: Mary Deschamp

For ITEC 815 San Francisco State University Instructor, Kathleen Ferenz With tie-ins to NASA's Mars Millennium Project

Grade Level: 5-8

Time Frame: anywhere from 3 weeks to a full year

Description of Project (Driving Questions/Components):

"Can you imagine yourself as a Martian architect, sociologist, or fashion designer, living where even colors appear differently than on our earth? This is an opportunity for you and your classmates to imagine, research, and design living and working quarters for a colony of 100 earthling pioneers to live on the surface of Mars for one year, probably 2030. This is a very real mission. NASA is already making plans. In completing this project you'll also join thousands of students around the nation in becoming a part of The Mars Millennium Project." (From the site Introduction)

The Task

"You are a NASA researcher, part of a design team assigned to develop a proposal for the human settlement of Mars. Your audience is the Congress of the United States, who fund such projects. Your design tool is Hyperstudio, and your presentation will be in the form of a multimedia scrapbook. You'll collect information, images, and insights from the Internet and other resources and "paste" them into Hyperstudio "cards." You'll be working in teams where group members take on different roles and look for certain kinds of information, answers, and ideas."

"In gaining background information, and in completing the last phase of your project, you may want to consider some of the same questions that American Midwestern homesteaders asked themselves at the beginning of this century:

What does it take to survive?
What is the frontier?
What gives life on the frontier meaning?
How do we prepare ourselves to adapt to new physical and cultural environments?
In building new settlements, how do we decide what to take with us and what to leave behind?
What makes a good community?
What makes a house a home?

Big Ideas/Essential Learnings:

To perceive past events and issues as they are experienced by people at a particular time.
To comprehend the interplay of change and continuity.
To understand the inter-relationship of population, resources, and environments.
To examine the risks and benefits of personal and social decisions.

Assessment:

"Assessments may be determined on an ongoing basis from completed activity sheets, group progress reports, and through the rubric presented on the Students Page, and through informal observation of increasing use of the skills and understandings stated above."

Students will produce a Hyperstudio scrapbook, which can also be assessed using any of the following multimedia rubrics:

Web Page Evaluation Rubric (Global SchoolNet Foundation)
Multimedia Project Scoring Rubric (Challenge 2000)
Self Evaluation Rubric(Region 20)
Multimedia Project Scoring Rubric (Region 20)
The Rubric Bank (Chicago Public Schools)

Technology Used/Skills Required:

Students create a Hyperstudio scrapbook

Multimedia Scrapbook TOOLS linked to from this project site:

JPEGView (Macintosh) is great for showing images you get from the Web (CHECKING ON URL)
Lview Pro (Windows) lets you show pictures you get from the Web (click to download) (CHECKING ON URL)
HyperStudio is used at many schools. Check out the Website for support, ideas, and the Netscape Plug-In (requires Mac & Netscape 2.0) (http://www.hyperstudio.com/)
Shareware.com gives you access to thousands of software programs you may want to use to show off your scrapbooks. (http://shareware.cnet.com/)
Of course you could use HTML and create a Web page of your scrapbook. If you want to avoid doing HTML we can think of creative ways to use Filamentality. (http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/)

Content/Standards

(more complete listing and explanations can be found at http://www.mcrel.org/standards-
benchmarks/)

Social Studies, Grades 5-8:

Students will be able:

to explain reasons people emigrate.
to use primary and secondary sources of information.
to describe factors related to influencing settlement patterns.
to know the relationship between physical features, natural resources, and land use.
to identify the relationship between physical and psychological well-being.
to describe personal connections to place.
to work independently and cooperatively within groups to accomplish goals.
to propose alternative uses of environments and resources.
to recognize materials as expressing a point of view.
to infer ways that natural and built environments interact with culture.
to explain the functions of art, music, and literature in preserving cultures.
to give examples of some resources used to meet early needs.
to analyze how science and technology have been used by people to adapt to new
environments.
to compare how various settlements have been established and maintained.
to describe adaptation as necessary for living in a specific geographic region.

Science, Grades 5-8:

Students will be able:

to design a solution for an identified problem.
to analyze environmental risks in the local environment.
to provide examples of ways scientists have used new evidence to make modifications in existing explanations (ex: space exploration).
to access information from a variety of reliable resources.
to analyze, interpret, and evaluate data from observations and investigations.

The Arts, Grades 5-8:

Students will be able:

to understand dance in various cultural and historic periods.
to understand the relationship between music, history, and culture.
to understand and apply media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts.

Technology, Grades 6-8:

Standard 1 - Knows the characteristics and uses of computer hardware and operating systems
Standard 2 - Knows the characteristics and uses of computer software programs
Standard 6 - Understands the nature and uses of different forms of technology

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