Bud the Teacher posted enthusiastic notes about using Stellarium in class. It’s worth the time of homeschooling parents, independent software vendors, and others interested in education to catch his full comments.
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.
Way to go, Bud. I like your insights. Now, I must get this information to the 12 year old who wants to be an astrophysist. I think she’ll launch it on her Tablet PC and absorb everything faster than I ever dreamed.