Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics


CfA Space Geodesy Homepage

Project ATLAS Homepage

An Introduction to Project ATLAS

The Global Positioning System (GPS)

Using GPS in the Classroom

Experiment 1: The Global Mapping Experiment

Mapping Your Community

Experiment 2: The Community Mapping Experiment

ATLAS Wrap-up and Suggested Activities

ATLAS Worksheets





ATLAS Wrap-Up

After completing all of the classroom activities and experiments for the ATLAS program, please take a few minutes to distribute and administer the post-ATLAS student surveys. We are particularly interested in this diagnostic tool. By comparing pre-ATLAS responses to the student survey to the post-ATLAS responses to the same questions, we wish to determine whether through their ATLAS experience students came to some realizations about Science and scientists that they may not have otherwise discerned. The surveys should be mailed to the address below.

We suggest that the students conduct a follow-up activities to this adventure in Science. Any of these can be performed as a group in class or individually as a homework assignment. Below we give a few suggestions of activities that the students could do that could reinforce their learning.

Artistic Maps . After having made plots of other communities on graph paper, ask your students to draw or paint or use the computer to make colorful, artistic representations of these locations. If the location is a stadium, they could draw a little stadium instead of a simple "point."

Find the Locations . Obtain a typical tourist map for one or more of the communities, and have the students identify on these maps the locations they have mapped using the data sent to them by their colleagues.

Virtual Visit . Have the students consider what a typical day might be like at one of their colleagues’ cities. Which of the other cities would they like to visit and why? If they visited this city what would they like to see? Many cities now have web sites. These can be visited.

E-pals. Some students may be very interested in continuing a correspondence via e-mail with one or more students from the schools in other countries. This activity could be encouraged.

ATLAS book. Have the students compile a collection of the maps and papers the students worked on through the ATLAS project (like a scrap book). It might include some compositions or essays the students have written, if they have performed any of the activities above, and copies of the log sheets. A journal of sorts...something by which to remember ATLAS.

Mail Address for Surveys and Other Materials

Please mail the surveys to: Dr. James L. Davis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Mail Stop 42, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Please feel free to include copies of the logs, worksheets, or any other information you think that we may find important.


Space Geodesy Group
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden St, MS 42
Cambridge, MA 02138-1516