HPISD’s New Digitarium Offers Constellation of STEAM Resources

Highland Park ISD’s Pierce Planetarium’s new expansion offers a whole new world of immersive, digital educational resources. 

The first update to the planetarium since 2010 was made possible by a previous Moody Foundation grant, and the upgrades took about two years.       

Now dubbed a digitarium, it can accommodate 63 students and serve as a resource for everything from astronomy, biology, foreign language, health, medicine, and more via large-scale digital models, district leaders say.   

“Once we were able to find just the right partner and digitalis (digital planetarium), it just changed everything for us,” said Geoffrey Orsak, Moody Innovation Institute executive director. “We knew at this point, we were going to have really the best science lab in the entire district available for everybody to use.”

HPISD elementary STEAM instructional coach Ashley Jones recently added digitarium liaison to her title, taking over from the district’s former longtime planetarium director and beloved “star lady” Donna Pierce. 

“Really, our vision for this is not just to show the planets and the stars and the sky,” Jones explained. “Those are all great, but how did those impact us here on Earth?”

Students would explore such questions as “Why are seasons changing?” and “Why are we getting hotter?” and then go home, share what they learned, and look up, she said. “This just gives them the tool to learn it. They can go outside and do it.”

Jones said running the digitarium is requiring ongoing training with all the “buttons and bells and whistles that we’re still learning.”

And it has its limits, as seen when one student recently asked whether it could track the Chinese spy balloon the U.S. shot down in February.

The digitarium doesn’t always have the data to answer student questions, Jone said, but she hopes it can spark curiosity and help them find answers to their questions.

Boone Elementary fourth graders, the first students to use the new digitiarium on Feb. 10, learned about the moon. 

Jones has since spoken about the digitarium offerings during professional development on Feb. 20. 

Eventually, district officials expect to partner with such programs as Moody Advanced Professional Studies and robotics to make the digitarium a destination for STEAM education districtwide.