Space Travelers

https://github.com/s-antoniou/nsac-space-travelers/blob/main/space_travellers.pdf

https://github.com/s-antoniou/nsac-space-travelers

The project has created a game that teaches girls and boys aged 10-14 about space from the perspective of the architectures and challenges of exploration. The game created is an online board game.

The online board game is based on Aspa. Aspa is a young girl aged 10, an adventurous personality who wants to learn about the space and explore our solar system and beyond. She lives in a world that needs more female role models, more scientists, engineers, explorers, more passion. She has decided to become that female role model. Thus, she began a journey to our solar system, to learn more, to explore, to show the other girls what they can do and how to do it. Through the game, Aspa travels to all planets of our solar system to gather resources, new knowledge and go even further. The Goal within the Solar System, in order to proceed to the next solar systems, is to reach the planet Poseidon. In that planet, Aspa will find GEMs that will help her buy better equipment and continue the game. To go to Poseidon, Aspa must successfully complete the individual Quests located on the individual planets of our solar system, learning about those planets. For example, the planets are shown not with their names, so you have to discover them. Choosing which planet you want to visit can be presented to you by some partners as well as some Easter eggs.

This creative game, despite that it mainly aims to girls, it will educate children of the age of 10 - 14 about the architecture of our solar system, STEAM issues in space as well as space exploration. Additionally, it seeks to motivate other girls to learn about STEAM and become future leaders, astronauts, scientists and engineers.

According to the UN, girls have a limited exposure to the creativity and contributions that STEAM fields make for a better world, thus we hope to bridge the gender gap in the future exploration generations. To build a future of a common understanding and zero gender based inequalities.

The platform used to develop the game was the MIT SCRATCH platform: https://scratch.mit.edu/

Orbit Distances(Km), Surface Gravity(m/s2), Orbit Period(Earth years), Surface Temperature(Celsius), Moons

It was a great interconnecting experience among people of different educational backgrounds that inspired a lot of creativity, exchange of ideas and perspectives, understanding and hope, as well as nurturing of exploration initiatives.

The most important knowledge the team has learned, was how to communicate effectively among stranger towards a common cause, how to use their diversified knowledge for reaching space exploration and education and how to exchange ideas and beliefs without prejudice.

The younger member of the team is a 10-years old girl, an elementary school student. Her participation in the Hackathon in parallel to her passion and wish for knowledge have been the inspiration for the team to create a game in space exploration. The game got her name, Aspa. Additionally, the team consisted of 2 female and 3 male members, whom all acknowledged the gap between the 2 genders regarding STEAM education. The age that STEAM education, space and space exploration enters the life of a human being, is still too far enough, in order to breed a space exploration generation. It is imperative for younger generations to take for granted what space is, how we can explore it and in parallel, give the resources to both girls and boys, towards their common future.

Having in mind that the project seeks to close that gap (gender), the project followed a gender based approach.  Making girls play this game, will allow more girls to become aware of interesting issues in science and help them situate themselves in Aspa's role (main character of the game). Additionally, in order to achieve the educational purposes and maximize impact, the project used kids friendly graphics created by the Scratch platform. At this point, the project considered that an open-source platform (such as Scratch) should be used, to allow other interested parties to take advantage of the game and add more features, quests, missions, and add more educational goals, using that game as a base. 

From the first minute we have entered the Hackathon we needed to deal with several obstacles related to communication issues among the participants, what everyone seeks to achieve and how each one of perceived the challenges and the role within the team. Thus, the first half of the day was consumed into building several teams and communicating with other player in order to find a good blend of people. Eventually, a team of 4 unknown to each other people was created, in which another person was added a couple of hours later. Those 5 people, from different educational backgrounds (computer engineering student, elementary school student, geologist, forester, industrial engineering student) reached a common idea, through consultation of experts and taking into consideration socioeconomic issues and worldwide values. Furthermore, having a diverse educational background, allowed us to give priority to the ideas that came from the most relevant  profile, which saved a lot of time. A significant setback has been the choice of the challenge at the beginning of the hackathon. However, with the support of a mentor, we realized that we needed to focus to another challenge.

We would certainly like to thank the mentors and more specifically Ms Margarita Belali.

Platform to develop the game:

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Data were retrieved from:

https://theplanets.org/the-sun/

https://www.universetoday.com/33415/interesting-facts-about-the-planets/

https://solasystem.nasa.gov/moons/earths-moon/overview/

https://solasystem.nasa.gov/planet-compare/

Photos used were retrieved from:

https://www.allwhitebackground.com/pluto-background.html/download/28390

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.