Explorers: Who Should (or could) Blaze the Path to Mars and Beyond?

A project connecting New World European explorers to modern New Worlds!

Part 1: Looking BackIntroducing the project What makes a person leave the known world and all his/her loved ones behind to explore new worlds, knowing that they'll likely never return alive?

Europeans did it. Pioneers did it. We're currently doing it in space. What types of people does it take and what are their distinguishing characteristics?

You have been hired to look back in history to find out what made those early explorers tick! Who was successful, who wasn't? Why? What were their motivations, challenges, plans, tools? What was their im-pact on the places they explored? Did they make it back?

Then find the commonalities of personality and create your idea of a "perfect explorer" for future Space Explora-tion!

Details of the research: Names Travel routes Reasons for exploration? Funding?  Transportation? Technology of the time? What did they find? Dangers? Were they successful in their quest?

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Purposeful and Incidental LearningStudents should learn not only the Standards-required European explorers (SS.5.4.1.3a), but also essential re-search and (digital) literacy and writing skills are what are emphasized most strongly in this unit.

Students should also be invited to learn about and build/use their own sextants and other tools of the explorer trade. Sextants can be used not only in finding current latitude at night (some space science connections), but also make a real world math application by learning about using sextants to figure the heights of tall objects such as buildings, towers, trees, etc. This is best done as a hands-on, outdoors experience.

Concepts such as Latitude and Longitude, as well as Time Zones can be discussed in length or review, depend-ing upon the audience experience and knowledge base. This is essential learning for the global citizen.

For students so inclined, the arts can be included with creating plays, re-creating works of art/clothing for the time, or re-creating the ships or other transportation that was used by the various explorers.

Of course problem solving and Web2.0 applications are present in every good PBL unit.

Part 2: Looking ForwardConnections to Our FutureNow that you’ve had a chance to learn more about the explorers of old, and don’t forget there have been explorers of all types throughout all the ages, let’s gather some common characteristic threads of what these people were about. Which were successful? What do you think made their voyages successful as compared to some others.

Modern navigation tools can be experienced such as GPS, and software such as Celestia or other space mapping tools can be utilized.

This thread is essential for students to begin to understand why learning about European explorers connects to them in today’s worlds. We are working at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and creating neural connections for our students to remember these learning experiences.

Part 3: Optional Resources and Approaches Do Your Own Thing!The lesson could be ramped up or down, depending on the needs of the class or individual students. With upper elementary students, the generalizations of the explorers could be key, focusing on Social Studies standards. How-ever, in a High School classroom, perhaps the students delve deeper into the research phase and focus on primary sources and a Language Arts emphasis.

Remember that the key is continuing to move the project toward student engagement, whatever that may be. This is simply a seed of an idea and you’re welcome to use it and grow it to fit your learners!

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