The Secret of Today's Voyager Storage Area. The New Voyager is Fine Tuned. Attend Space Camp at the Space Center. The Imaginarium.

What the Voyager Storage Area Used to Be

There is a door at the end of the Odyssey / Phoenix Corridor with a sign which reads "Only Enter with Permission" or something to that effect.  To the left of that door is the Odyssey entrance. To the right is the Phoenix simulator's emergency exit.  Space Center staff and volunteers know what's behind that "Enter With Permission" door - a costume / prop storage area. It sits right behind the Odyssey main viewer wall.  

What many of today's current pool of volunteers and Voyager cadets don't know is what that area looked like and how it was used before the new Odyssey was built.  The classroom containing the Odyssey and Phoenix was half of Central School's library when I started teaching there in 1983.  In the mid 1980's it was used as the school's first computer / technology lab.  

Then in 1988 I came up with this crazy idea of building a spaceship simulator. That room was available. Principal Stan Harward liked the idea and the fundraising and grant writing began.  The first simulator was to go in the back of the classroom running along the wall starting where today's Odyssey Control Room is located.  I raised more money than expected and build an addition to the school instead; the USS Voyager.  The classroom was used for field trip lessons - our Discovery Room. My desk was at the front of the room. 

Eventually the first Odyssey was built followed by the Phoenix. The front of the room was my 'office' / staff gathering / gossiping / socializing / mission briefing / area.  

This is how the front of the room looked right before the Space Center closed for upgrading and renovation in 2012.  Today's storage area is where Stacy is standing in the photo.  The hobbit door leading to the Voyager is out of shot on the far left.  You see my chair and computer etc.  

The Phoenix wall is shown in this photo. Look right at the center of the photo and you'll see the Phoenix's front hatchway.  The black door on the right is the Phoenix emergency exit.

That storage area was the nerve center of the Space Center for 23 years.  This is where much of the imagineering took place.  If only those walls could talk; oh the stories they could tell!  Pause and appreciated the magic next time you step into that special place.

The Voyager II is Fine Tuned   

The Voyager II at Renaissance Academy is 99% finished. We're in the polishing and fine tuning stage.  I want to thank Alex Anderson, Isaac O., Kyle Herring, and Brent Anderson for the work they're doing to get the ship reading for practice missions.  Alex and Isaac have spent dozens of hours working on the ship's programming.    

Last week the Voyager's tactical system / main viewer was their top priority.  "Mission Accomplished" I'm pleased to report.  I can't wait to invite everyone to come and enjoy a mission on the new Voyager.  I'd better get busy and write some new stories! 

Mr. W.  

Already Bored with Summer?  How About Coming to a Space Camp at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center.  

 The Imaginarium

The Simulators Get a Good Summer Cleaning. The IKS Highlander is Featured in a Newspaper Article. Theater Imaginarium.

The Space Center's "Let's Get the Ships Looking Good" Summer Maintenance Week

It is a yearly tradition. The first week of summer vacation is spent cleaning, polishing, repairing, and decluttering the Magellan, Odyssey, Phoenix, and Galileo simulators at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in Pleasant Grove.  I started the tradition in June of 1991 just before we opened for our very first summer camp.  Back then we had the Voyager only to ready for summer camp.  June 2012 was the last time we had five simulators to prep.  

Natalie, James, and Devon were busy working on new rope lighting for the Odyssey and Magellan.

The Odyssey Control Room was a disaster zone. They even had part of the wall down to work on one of the engineering panels. 

The rest of the Odyssey equipment was in the hallway between the Odyssey and the Phoenix.

I found Jon Parker, Asst. Director, working on summer story videos in the Phoenix Control Room. 
He didn't want to be disturbed and closed the blinds right after the picture was snapped.

Space Center Director James Porter was playing traffic warden in the Discovery Room. While some were busy in the simulators, the Space Center's volunteers were working their way through the summer mission scripts learning the many acting parts.

 I caught the volunteers a short while later in the Phoenix hanging out. I think they were underfoot so Jon was given additional responsibilities :)

News From Dream Flight Adventures

Simulator brings excitement into J.E. Harrison Middle School classroom in Whitehall, Pennsylvania

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Admiral Starblayze

This just in:  the IKS Highlander was recently featured in an article in the Tribune-Review.

The simulator classroom was showcased to parents and the community recently during a Remake Learning event at Harrison Middle School, Pennsylvania.

This is the text of the article

Then came eighth grade and the opening of the IKS Highlander life-size, video-game-style classroom at J.E. Harrison Middle School — a fun place to learn for Jesionowski, where she made friends, collaborated with peers and did something she was interested in.

Now, Jesionowski can't stop talking about school, according to her mother, Tina, of Baldwin Borough.

“She tells her 11-year-old sister, Sarah, all about it and now she can't wait to get here,” Tina Jesionowski said. “Leaving Harrison next year, her only regret is that she doesn't get to use this anymore.”

The doors of the IKS Highlander opened one year ago and the room, along with a partnering Mission Ops lab, were incorporated into classroom learning for all 947 Harrison students in 2015-16.

The room was showcased to parents and the community last week during a Remake Learning event at Harrison.

Baldwin-Whitehall received a grant from the Grable Foundation to fund a portion of the Dream Flight Adventures-based simulator classroom, complete with fluorescent lights, tiered seating and iPads built into each station.

The room is meant to take students on imaginative adventures while teaching them about health, science, English language arts and history. But it's more than just a game.

“One of the fears of something like this is that it's like a Kennywood ride. The kids come and they love it but how do you connect it with education? Our teachers have done a wonderful job of that,” Principal Jill Fleming-Salopek said.

The Mission Ops lab serves as the connector between the simulator and classroom learning.

This year, Baldwin-Whitehall paired with several people to bring extra learning opportunities into the classroom through the Mission Ops and IKS Highlander spaces.

A Baldwin High School graduate and Duquesne University pharmacy student taught a five-week session in March, when students became junior pharmacists and learned what it is like to work at a hospital, choose the appropriate medication for a patient and determine the right dosage.

Sled dogs were brought in to give students a real-life example of what they were reading about in “Call of Wild.”

“There's so much going on,” STEM teacher Michael Kaleta said. “They get immersion learning.”

Students are required to fill out an application for a job before they go on a mission inside the IKS Highlander. Inside the room, teamwork is required to complete a mission, Kaleta said.

“I've seen a lot of excitement, not just in the faces of the students, but in the teachers and parents, as well,” Fleming-Salopek said.

Dena Walzl, an English-as-a-second-language teacher at Harrison, used the simulator to help English-language learners make connections between words and situations. It allows them to see an application of the words they're learning, she said.

“They're making a connection,” Walzl said.

Kaleta said he plans to expand on learning from the space in the future. He would like to bring Baldwin High School students in to pair with the middle schoolers in the classroom and has many other ideas of how to use the classroom space for education.

“We've opened the doors to a new way of learning,” Kaleta said.

The room is fun for the students and it makes them want to learn, their teachers said.

“Go check out this room. It's like Disney,” Kaleta said, as a handful of children walked into the school last week.

Nabin Pokhrel, 15, an eighth-grader, said he was “amazed at the sound and technology” in the IKS Highlander and “how it connected with our education process.”

“Hands-on is much better than learning things in a book,” he said.

“I loved it,” Angela Jesionowski, 14, said. “It's like your favorite video game came to life.”

Stephanie Hacke is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 412-388-5818 or shacke@tribweb.com.

Theater Imaginarium