First, as a co-creator of the "Cindi in Space" comic book, thanks for taking the time to read it. We loved getting slashdotted and appreciate your interest and feedback.
For those worried about the "manga" designation, we don't mind whatever you want to call it. We call it a comic book. To NASA we call it a "graphical introduction for middle school students to the CINDI mission". Tokyopop (a manga company) calls it a manga, and so does my husband. As long as kids like it and learn something, that's what matters.
Okay, the space dogs are silly, but that's the point. We're not surprised that many of you think we should have gone straight to the science...after all slashdot is news for NERDS. We're hoping to reach the rather larger fraction of 12 to 15 year old kids who tend to think of science as boring. (Can you image how hard the ionosphere is to explain to these kids?) We're also interested in getting and keeping kids, especially girls, interested in science. Girls tend to start losing interest in "nerdy" things by 6th grade. Want the real nerdy scoop? We have a whole curriculum guide that will be posted online complete with boring (to typical middle school kids) information sheets and we hope to have real CINDI data for kids to analyze, too.
Finally, an extra big thank you to those who caught the typo on page 15. We will work to get it fixed ASAP. It may take a few weeks, though, given what we paid our student artist. It's hard even for us to believe that we did this whole comic book for less than the cost of one of us going to the fall American Geophysical Union meeting!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually we currently have a February 2006 launch date. We should be up by spring.
First, as a co-creator of the "Cindi in Space" comic book, thanks for taking the time to read it. We loved getting slashdotted and appreciate your interest and feedback.
For those worried about the "manga" designation, we don't mind whatever you want to call it. We call it a comic book. To NASA we call it a "graphical introduction for middle school students to the CINDI mission". Tokyopop (a manga company) calls it a manga, and so does my husband. As long as kids like it and learn something, that's what matters.
Okay, the space dogs are silly, but that's the point. We're not surprised that many of you think we should have gone straight to the science...after all slashdot is news for NERDS. We're hoping to reach the rather larger fraction of 12 to 15 year old kids who tend to think of science as boring. (Can you image how hard the ionosphere is to explain to these kids?) We're also interested in getting and keeping kids, especially girls, interested in science. Girls tend to start losing interest in "nerdy" things by 6th grade. Want the real nerdy scoop? We have a whole curriculum guide that will be posted online complete with boring (to typical middle school kids) information sheets and we hope to have real CINDI data for kids to analyze, too.
Finally, an extra big thank you to those who caught the typo on page 15. We will work to get it fixed ASAP. It may take a few weeks, though, given what we paid our student artist. It's hard even for us to believe that we did this whole comic book for less than the cost of one of us going to the fall American Geophysical Union meeting!