In the year 2061, inside a space station orbiting 250 miles above Earth, Ryan Faris clutches dual joysticks, trying to get the robotic arm on his screen to pick up a plant.
His team must retrieve and analyze plant samples before another space exploration team can find Comet Halley. He moves the mechanical arm into position, but the claw won't budge.
"Hey, how do you get this thing open?" he asks.
But the rest of the crew is busy with other tasks. Ryan rereads the manual, presses the red button and pushes the joysticks again. Finally, the claw opens, and he grabs the plant.
"Yay, I'm successful! This is cool," he says, as he heads to the glove box to examine the sample.
Suddenly, a siren blares. A red light flashes.
“It’s an emergency,” shouts Flight Commander Catherine Gray, in a royal blue NASA jumpsuit.
On overhead monitors, Mission Control reports that the humidity level — which should be between 55 and 65 — is at 42.
“Low humidity leads to a build up of static electricity," Gray says. “We need to grab a black bar to ground ourselves and discharge it now. Too much electricity could scramble our computers, and that'll make us crash and die. You don’t want to die today, do you?”
“No!” the class of fifth-graders yell as they scurry around the station. Ryan abandons his task and hollers, “Everybody, grab a bar!”
At the Challenger Learning Center in Sacramento’s Discovery Museum, 10-year-old Ryan is experiencing his fantasy to explore the final frontier. In this space simulation, called "Rendezvous with Comet Halley," the fifth-grade class from Weimar Hills Elementary School was divided into eight teams, each with specific tasks. Failure to follow through with a task, they were told, could jeopardize the entire mission.
For a long time, education leaders worldwide have been on a mission to find ways to make learning fun. Pictures of planets, dinosaur diagrams and long division problems have little real-world relevance for students.
