For Educators: What is SDSS Voyages?
Activities and research experiences for students, built on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Our materials empower students to explore a wide variety of astronomical concepts, from asteroids in our own Solar System to the most distant quasars ever observed, using the same high-quality data employed by professional astronomers.
SDSS Voyages provides free educational astronomy activities, which are appropriate for students across a wide range in ages and abilities.
The entire site is designed to give educators flexibility when organizing learning experiences for their students. Activities are scaffolded so that students can also progress at their own pace from simple conceptual activities to advanced discovery-based projects. Higher level students can use Voyages activities to build the basic knowledge and skills required to initiate their own novel explorations of the millions of stars and galaxies in the SDSS database. Voyages strives to put students at the helm of their explorations with support from you, the educator.
What materials are currently available for teachers?
- Sample curricula that demonstrate how you could structure a learning experience for your students
- A complete list of the available Preflight, Launch, and Expedition type activities with short descriptions and teaching guides
- Links to national math and science standards, appropriate for U.S.-based educators.
How do I get started?
If you are new to this website, we recommend starting on the Plan Your Voyage page, which provides several examples of how you might combine activities and resources to meet your particular needs and gives an overview of our currently available resources and activities.
We invite you to send any feedback or activity requests to: outreach@sdss.org