The mission of Project Ianos is to engage and educate students with the wonders of space and to inspire them to become explorers of it.
Immersive Videos
We'll have more to say on this in a future post, but the first step in any education environment is... engagement. If a student isn't engaged, she or he will never invest in the lesson at hand. At Project Ianos, we use short videos hosted by explorer Josh Bernstein to invite students to watch Josh go into the field with NASA and other space industry experts to answer a question -- eg. how do you exercise in space, or eat in space, or go to the bathroom in space...? Project Ianos's initial 8 episodic videos were inspired by 1,500 questions submitted by middle school students.
Standards-Aligned Content
We'll have more to say on this in a future post, too, but working in partnership with the videos is a robust series of instructional units called Expeditions. Each Expedition consists of three activities, which we call Missions. Designed by teachers for teachers, Project Ianos Expeditions and Missions are sophisticated, fun, and relevant, giving students the chance to become explorers of space and gain a better understanding of the challenges in human spaceflight.
Pepper Learning Management System
Teachers can access the Project Ianos course through the Pepper platform managed by the Public Consulting Group. Pepper is built on the powerful edX platform, the Cambridge-based education partnership founded by Harvard University and M.I.T., to support two important missions: improving online education, and advancing teaching and learning through research. The general public can also access Project Ianos videos on our YouTube channel and download PDF of the learning materials on our Content page.