Our Learning Philosophy
Learning is what we do everyday. Why should learning about space be different if you are inspired by it?
We believe in diversity, diversity in ways of learning too.
There are courses on lifelong education out there, taught by highly qualified academics and well trained professionals (which we aspire to collect and share the list here), which is a great way to learn. What we do here is to support lifelong education in a different way, especially for those of who can only do sporadic learning.
Learning is driven by hands on group project experience and theory is guided by other participants or self taught just in time and just enough to get over the hurdle of the task on hand. Much like the way we learn on the job, except it's more fun and you can choose your own pace.
Our premises:
- Everyone has a skill (If you are in a job, you have a skill and you probably have a hobby, that's another skill, and so on) that can be shared.
- It doesn't take an expert to teach a novice, it just take someone who knows more to fill in the gaps with just enough theory.
- Everyone is able to take the initiatives to learn - instead of waiting for an answer, search for it.
- Learning does not need to happen in a linear fashion - start at any class in the topic (don't wait for a re-run, because there's not always a re-run in life)
- Everyone can "teach"/"learn" different things in the same class, with the "tutor" providing guidance towards the overall objective.
- Project based, hands on learning is more memorable.
- Real work are all done by teams, let's learn as a team.
For Visual Learners
Are you a visual thinker? Well, we've pinned a bunch of poster for you to enjoy at your own time:
(Will you help us to pin more down at Pinterest?)
(Will you help us to pin more down at Pinterest?)
For Team-Based Hands-On Learners
Our current module is on learning how to build spacecraft controls using open hardware. A willingness to learn is all we need and we are proud to say not everyone turned up has used Arduino before and they do after.
The FormatTopic - a space related project
Number of Classes per Topic - as many as needed to complete the project Agenda of a Class - tends to be like a day of "hackathon"/workshop with tutor presenting the project goals and high level theory, with people running ad-hoc catch-up sessions, like Arduino 101, as needed Tutor - an experienced and professional person, from industry or academia Cost - if the tutor will teach for free and the venue will sponsor us for free, it's free! For anything that is not free, we will pass the cost on. Or you can help us to secure a sponsor or a sponsored venue and/or the catering to drive the cost down for something you'd like to see happen. |
Nominate a Topic
Give us a topic and a tutor (all the better if you can bring some assistants) and we'll help set it up.
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1. Spacecraft Controls (aka orientation thrusters) - ONGOING
Overview
Learn about spacecraft controls from hands on practical session - build one! We will learn by example from Devon One's orientation thruster.
The days of learning will not be made up of any major chunks of theory session, because we believe in just in time learning and it's driven by practical sessions - think of it as series of hack day that eventually builds up to a working orientation thruster and the learning of theories happens as you need to read about them.
Learn about spacecraft controls from hands on practical session - build one! We will learn by example from Devon One's orientation thruster.
The days of learning will not be made up of any major chunks of theory session, because we believe in just in time learning and it's driven by practical sessions - think of it as series of hack day that eventually builds up to a working orientation thruster and the learning of theories happens as you need to read about them.
When and Where
- Day 1: 8 Nov 2014 at Fab Lab London (photos)
- Day 2: 31 Jan 2015 at Create Space London (photos)
- Day 3: 21 Feb 2015 at Create Space London (photos)
- Day 4: 25 April 2015 at Create Space London (photos)
- Day 5: 30 May 2015 at Create Space London (photos)
- Day 6: 17 July 2015 at Create Space London (photos)
Join us at any stage, we currently have no plans to do re-runs so you better not wait for the module to restart, join us on the upcoming one.
Module Lead and Sponsors
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Ray Bainbridge from Tranquility Aerospace
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With technical support and venue sponsor from Create Space London
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Progress/Recap
Update/recap on the lesson you've missed at our logbook: http://www.spacetownhall.com/logbook/category/orientation-thruster
Code for spacecraft controls: https://github.com/TranquilityAerospace
Discussion and resource sharing
Now that we got a few things going offline, here's an online forum to keep the momentum going online:
Now that we got a few things going offline, here's an online forum to keep the momentum going online:
Here is a list of videos we've found on YouTube that we thought was fun and informative to watch with regards to launch-crafts:
(if you know of any, please let us know!)
(if you know of any, please let us know!)
