About This Lesson
I'm building TimeAndSpace.Science to help curious students discover and get interested in earth and space science.
This started as a project to engage more with my 11-year-old daughter and build someting she would think is interesting and want to help build something for others.
Building things, big things, has always been something we enjoy doing together. At the beach we build huge sand castles 5-6 feet tall or divert little creeks that cut their way through the sand and rocks on the beach. Often we get 5 to 10 and sometimes 20 kids and parents jumping in to help. She loves it, inspiring other to ask about what we're doing and want to jump in to help. I love it too. I don't know if this will turn into the same thing. But I want to try.
I want to make kids curious and want to be part of the lesson through their teacher. The same way kids come over and want to help, I am hoping teachers can work with their classes to ask questions not answered on the site and I'll try and build what ideas they come up with and attribute it to your classroom.... By saying something like, "The idea for this page was developed with the help of Mr. Smith's 5th grade class at Paradise elementary school 2026/2027 class". But that is optional. And, this isn't a real class. Mr Smith was my 5th teacher at Paradise Elementary School in Paradise, CA, many many years ago.
Attributing the idea to the class, including the students, would both get them involved and give them something they can show others where they made a difference, and build something used by hundreds or possibly thousands of other classes all over the country and all over the world.
Below are some of the questions answered with the pages and simulators on our site. I want to work with teachers (and indirectly with your students) to ask new questions and bring new lessons to life.
- Why don't planets fall into the Sun or simply fly away?
- How do gravity and motion work together to create an orbit?
- Why do we have seasons?
- Why does the Moon change phases?
- How are the Sun, Moon, Earth, and tides connected?
- Why does Jupiter have so many moons?
- What happens when you change one part of the system?
I want students to be able to experiement with the site and learn how earth and space science work.
My background is in business analytics, computer programming, and digital marketing. Over the last couple of years, AI has become another tool in my toolbox and has made it possible for me to build and experiment much faster than I could have before.
I started this project only a couple of months ago. Until now, the work has been my daughter and I coming up with ideas, building, experimenting, and talking about how to make it better. I am hoping other teachers will find this project interesting and want to give some constructive feedback as well.
This is my first big ask for other people to join us.
I've been building interactive tools that let students change time, location, perspective, speed, and other variables and see what happens.
A few examples of what we've build so far:
- Sun, Moon & Earth Movement Simulator
https://timeandspace.science/sun-moon-earth-movement-simulator/
Students can move through time and explore day and night, Moon phases, sunrise and sunset, seasons, and the changing relationship between the Sun, Earth, and Moon. - Orbital Velocity Simulator
https://timeandspace.science/orbital-velocity-simulator/
Students can experiment with orbital speed and explore how gravity and motion work together to create an orbit. - Solar System Simulator
https://timeandspace.science/solar-system-simulator/
Students can move through time, change their perspective, and explore the solar system from the inner planets outward. - Tides
https://timeandspace.science/tides/
Students can explore predicted tides at different locations and begin connecting what happens in our oceans with the movements and gravitational influence of the Earth, Moon, and Sun.
I've started creating lesson plans too:
https://timeandspace.science/classroom/lessons/
But this is where I need the most help and teachers seem to be the perfect match.
I can build the technology. Teachers understand how students learn, what works in a classroom, where students get confused, what gets them excited, and what turns an interesting demonstration into a genuinely good lesson.
I'd like to collaborate on both sides of that.
I am hoping you can take something I've already built and work with me to turn it into a great lesson that can be an online lesson to anyone.
Tell me what would make one of the existing simulators more useful for your students, and I'll see if I can build it.
Or let's start completely from scratch.
Tell me something you're trying to teach. We can work backward together and ask: What could we build online, and what could students do physically in the classroom, that would help them actually understand how this system works?
I'd especially like to create lessons where students can make a prediction, experiment, change something, get an unexpected result, ask why, reserach on their own, try again, and eventually discover the relationship themselves.
And please be critical.
If something I've built is confusing, scientifically unclear, boring, too complicated, inaccurate, or simply not useful in your classroom, tell me. That's valuable feedback. If I can fix it, that improvement can help every student and teacher who uses it afterward.
My daughter has already made dozens of suggestions that have changed the site. She's asked questions and suggested new pages and I love that.
What happens when an entire classroom starts contributing ideas?
If your students come up with an idea for a simulator, activity, feature, or lesson and we build it, I'd like to give them credit for it.
I want students to be able to see something they helped create being used by another classroom across the country, or eventually on the other side of the world.
I think kids can be pretty proud of that.
My professional background also gives me the ability to help people find what we create. If teachers help me make these resources genuinely useful, my long-term goal is to use my digital marketing experience to get them in front of thousands of classrooms.
Everything we create will remain freely available online for teachers and students.
I have the technical skills to build the tools. You have the classroom experience. Students have ideas neither of us will think of.
Let's see what we can build together.
If you're interested, please reach out. We can improve something that already exists, create a lesson around it, or start with an idea and build something completely new.
