About this project
"What you cannot imagine, you cannot do" says Astronaut Alvin Drew. Story Time From Space is a completely unique, inventive and fun educational program that builds on the fantastic adventure of space flight to encourage families & students to participate in reading and science.
Story Time From Space interweaves two of the basic educational building blocks: reading and science to develop interest and strengthen skills in both literacy and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
On January 9, 2014 the five books were launched to the International Space Station!!! Yes you read that right- the books are already in orbit, circling over your head every 90 minutes at a speed of some 17,000 miles per hour. In other words, Story Time From Space is happening and the only question is how widely available can we make this fantastic program. With your help, we can turn it into one of the most exciting global education & family programs ever created!
In the books, written by Astronomer and Author Jeffrey Bennett, Max the most adventurous dog on and off the planet ventures into space, visiting ISS, the Moon, Mars and Jupiter, on great adventures, helping his astronaut friends explore and discover the science mysteries of space. The astronauts are currently reading these books on the ISS to the children of the Earth and recording these readings.
Videos of these readings will be used to develop cross content educational curriculum, family programs, after school programs, distance learning and depending on our success with you, a planetarium show for use in schools and for families to explore the science of space along with Max. The out of this world videos and curriculum will be housed in an electronic library on www.storytimefromspace.com for people to access around the world.
This is real!! NASA is having the astronauts read and now we need you! One of our next steps, with your help, is to develop several science demonstration experiments then build and launch them to the space station. The astronauts on the space station will perform the science experiments, video them and collect data for use by schools, libraries, science centres and families. The content of the demonstrations will tie directly into the content in the books and into curriculum requirements of schools. We are already in the planning stages to send these science demonstrations and more books to the ISS, tentatively looking at a launch in September but that depends on you! We need your support to succeed!
In short, our objective is to encourage reading and to improve the quality of and excitement for science education in our schools, and for children all around the world.
Join us as a sponsor to bring this exciting literacy & STEM program to your children's school and to your children at home!
Our initial goal is to raise $35,000 to be used for editing the videos being shot by the astronauts currently reading the Max series of books on the ISS and get the website/electronic library up and running.
STRETCH-GOAL $65,000 Complete development of the companion science demonstration hardware, launch the hardware to the ISS and edit the ISS based science demonstration videos.
STRETCH-GOAL $250,000: If you love this idea as much as we do and we hit $250,000 we will develop the curriculum material and presentations for educators, families, after school programs.
STRETCH-GOAL $500,000: If we hit $500,000 we will be over the Moon along with Max! Develop Professional Development days for teacher training on literacy & science education and conduct pilot studies in schools with the material. Want to be one of the first schools - let us know!
LONGER TERMS GOALS: The STFS team is committed to fostering interest in literacy & STEM. Our plan is to continue to send reading material to the ISS, and eventually the Moon, and to develop science demonstration hardware to clearly illustrate the basic science principles covered within the books.
TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT! Join us on Facebook.com/storytimefromspace, Twitter #storytimespace, sponsor what you can and share with all your friends. Remember, "What you cannot imagine, you cannot do" and thanks!!
History: The STFS team has been working on the development of this adventure for three years, starting with the first pilot test on Space Shuttle mission STS-133 in 2011. On this mission Alvin Drew read the book Max Goes to the Moon, in an electronic version to test the concept from an astronauts perspective. Alvin says, "this program is fun for the astronauts and one of those programs that you just get and wonder why we haven't done this before!" Over the past years we have surveyed over1200 educators to make sure this is a program they would implement in the classroom, Overwhelmingly teachers were excited and 9/10 teachers said they would use Story Time From Space in their classroom. We then worked with CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) and NASA to launch the Max Goes to Space series of books to the ISS and to have astronauts read these while on orbit.
Risks and challenges
We are pretty lucky because we have tremendous experience on the Story Time From Space team- astronauts advising us, astronomer, author, educators. We also already have the books up in space! How cool is that!!!! The response to Story Time From Space has been great, so our only challenge would be if there is a delay in a launch there might be a delay in our timeline.
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Funding period
- (60 days)