| Deddington Masterclass | |
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- Virtual Planetarium |
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The staff at Deddington wanted to set up their own virtual planetarium, something that would make the children go 'wow'! The interactive whiteboard, projector and laptop in the ICT suite were ideal for this purpose, and it took just a couple of hours to set it all up.
We started by searching the internet for sites about the solar system, particularly those with real images of the planets, sun and moon. From these, we selected the best images which represented the material we wanted to cover. Having downloaded these images into the My Pictures folder on the laptop's hard drive, it was then easy to set up an automatic 'slide show' using the built-in functionality of Windows XP. We simply expanded the Picture Tasks menu on the left hand side of the My Pictures folder, then chose 'View as Slide Show'.
Once everything was ready, the children were brought in, the curtains were drawn and the lights switched off, just like in a real planetarium, and the show began. All the children loved it, and the staff were amazed at how much they knew already about the solar system, particularly the boys. They especially liked the image of the space walk (see below).
Deddington's
'virtual planetarium'
If you would like to create your own planetarium, we recommend the following
websites: