Information and Commonly Received Questions involving Materials Usage

The vast majority of materials on this web site (HTML5 simulations, formative assessment tasks, astronomy demonstration videos, and the legacy versions of  NAAP simulations, ClassAction questions, and ranking/sorting tasks) were developed with NSF and NASA funding and their usage for non-profit educational applications is freely available. Other usage requires carefully negotiated permission. We will answer commonly received questions  below:

• You would like to make use of our simulations (or other resources) in your non-profit course, can you get permission? Go for it! You have permission!
• And of course we wouldn't mind being cited – something like: Materials reproduced from the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Web Site (https://astro.unl.edu).
• You would like to use a screenshot of a simulation in an article, course manual, book, or web site, can you get permission? Go for it! You have permission!
• And of course we wouldn't mind being cited – something like: Screenshot of the xxx simulator hosted on the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Web Site (https://astro.unl.edu).
• You make considerable usage of a certain simulation (or several). For confidence in reliability, can you get permission to host it (them) locally on your own server? Go for it! You have permission! We have purposefully designed our web site to make this process easy. The HTML code needed to point to a flash simulation, grab a simulation, or host a simulation locally is easily grabbed from an individual simulations entry on our list of simulations page. However, this procedure has become much more complicated in the age of "flash emulation" and will require you to host or point to Ruffle or a similar product.
• And of course we wouldn't mind being cited – something like: Simulation downloaded from the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Web Site (https://astro.unl.edu).

Information and Commonly Received Questions involving Code Usage

There has been considerable interest expressed in our code – especially for translating simulation controls into other languages and to a lesser extent adding new features to simulations. All of the released code is in flash and available at https://github.com/astroUNL. We do not believe that further development in flash makes sense today based upon the present direction of the internet.

All of our formative assessment tasks are specified in .iep files that can be downloaded and then the tasks can be extended and tweaked in our interactives editor. Recently developed HTML5 simulations are still in a formative state. The html5 code will be made publicly available at the conclusion of our NSF project.

• You would like to translate a simulation into your native language and disseminate the new version of the simulator. Go for it! You have permission! Can we get assistance from you? No, you are on your own!
• And of course we wouldn't mind being cited – something like: This is an Estonian language version adapted from the English version of the xxx simulator hosted on the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Web Site (https://astro.unl.edu).
• You would like to expand the functionality of a simulation. Go for it! You have permission! Can we get assistance from you? No, you are on your own! We hope that simulations are not reprogrammed to do “unphysical” things. A Jovian planet orbitting the Moon would be bad!
• And of course we wouldn't mind being cited – something like: This is an adaptation of the original version of the xxx simulator hosted on the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Web Site (https://astro.unl.edu).