1. Rosemary Walling, Marie Drake Planetarium, Juneau, AK (co-host)

2. Alan Gould, Berkeley California USA (co-host)

3. Aarush Bothra, Interactive Visualization Lab, University of Minnesota

4. Sarah Weaver, Como Planetarium, St. Paul, MN

5. Amie Gallagher, Raritan Valley Community College Planetarium, Branchburg, NJ

6. Andrew Buckingham, Auckland, New Zealand

7. Dário Fonseca - Hemispherium @ Exploratório - Coimbra, Portugal

8. Katie Iadanza, Pierce College Science Dome, Lakewood, WA

9. Adam Thanz - Erwin, TN - Retired from Bays Mountain Planetarium, Kingsport, TN

10. Sally Brummel, Bell Museum, St. Paul, Minnesota

11. Andy Kreyche - Santa Cruz, California

12. Jeremy Amarant SAGE Planetarium, Palmdale School District, Palmdale, CA, PPA President

13. Suzy Gurton, Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium, Prescott, AZ

14. Thaddeus LaCoursiere, Bell Museum, Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium, St. Paul, Minnesota

15. April Whitt, Atlanta, Georgia.

AI Summary of Seminar of Aarush Bothra and Sarah Weaver (September 2026)

CanoeView: 

A Tool For Indigenous Education in a Planetarium Classroom

with Aarush Bothra and Sarah Weaver

In planetariums, there is a tradition of live narration that intentionally contrasts with pre-recorded movies. Current teaching and learning in planetariums embrace this model, and there is clear interest and potential to do more. To this end, we created CanoeView, a 3D environment designed to support such storytelling in a Dakota context and enable student participation through a real-time group interaction. Currently, students use tablets to navigate a canoe on the Mississippi River. Our session will examine both the technical elements of implementing the digital canoe and the experiential learning benefits and challenges for middle school students in a planetarium. We continue to develop the project with indigenous educators and plan to include student devices that mimic the physical action of canoeing. The goal of the project is to enhance student understanding and enable dynamic uses for educators.  

Note: This is an AI-generated summary and may contain errors. 

Contents

Overview

Key Concepts or Theories

Important Questions Raised

Key Takeaways

Topic 1: Interactive Dome Technology — System Design and Live Demonstration

Topic 2: Pedagogical Design and Classroom Implementation

Topic 3: Indigenous Cultural Framework and Community Relationships

Topic 4: Technical Infrastructure, Funding, and Future Directions

Overview

This seminar, hosted by the Pacific Planetarium Association (PPA), featured Sarah Weaver, Director and Teacher at Como Planetarium (St. Paul Public Schools), and Arush Bothra, a Human-Computer Interaction researcher and computer scientist at the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota. The presentation showcased an interactive, collaborative planetarium technology developed with support from a PPA mini-grant. The project enables middle school students to collectively navigate a virtual dugout canoe along the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers using tablets, while learning about Dakota star constellations and Indigenous cultural knowledge. The session combined a live dome demonstration with discussion of pedagogical design, technical architecture, and Indigenous education frameworks.

Key Concepts or Theories

Collaborative Interactive Technology: A Unity-based system allowing up to 30 students to simultaneously influence dome visuals via tablets, with majority-rule input logic governing canoe navigation.

Indigenous Education for All: A Minnesota state education objective ensuring K-12 students receive meaningful exposure to Indigenous ways of knowing and learning.

Four Factors for Activating Indigenous Presence in Technology: A framework developed by Sean Doerr, comprising: (1) community-relevant topic, (2) including Indigenous makers, (3) creating a culturally identifiable experience, and (4) centering radical relationality in design.

Radical Relationality: A concept rooted in Indigenous worldviews that recognizes all elements of the environment — rocks, trees, stars — as relatives, emphasizing interconnectedness and relationship-centered learning.

Kapemni (Kopemni): A Dakota concept meaning "what is above is also below," central to understanding the relationship between the river, the land, and the sky.

Bdote: The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, a sacred Dakota site and the setting for the virtual canoe experience.

Important Questions Raised

• Why does starting with the interactive canoe experience work better pedagogically than beginning with content instruction?

• How does the majority-rule input system handle conflicting student inputs, and what happens when equal numbers press left and right?

• Could this software and approach be adapted for smaller, inflatable mobile planetariums or other geographic and cultural contexts?

• What are the ethical considerations around using AI and data when working with Indigenous communities?

• How might similar interactive technology be applied to other Indigenous cultural narratives, such as petroglyph sites in the American Southwest?

Key Takeaways and Summary of Learning Objectives

• Light pollution affects human health, wildlife behavior, energy consumption, and access to natural night skies, impacting 80% of the global population

• Simple, actionable solutions exist including shielding lights, using motion detectors, pointing lights downward, using warmer color temperatures, and turning off unnecessary lights

• Both place-based narrative and documentary-style planetarium shows significantly increased audience knowledge, awareness, and motivation to address light pollution

• Families who attended the programs took concrete actions within two weeks, including changing outdoor lights, turning off lights, and discussing light pollution with others

• Collaborative family activities following planetarium shows may significantly enhance learning outcomes and behavioral change by creating explicit action plans

• Effective light pollution education addresses audience value systems, demonstrating that safety and dark skies are not mutually exclusive goals

• Planetarium educators are well-positioned to lead community conversations about light pollution and environmental stewardship

Key Takeaways

• The project integrates rigorous science education with Indigenous cultural knowledge, specifically Dakota star constellations and the significance of the Bdote.

• Students collectively navigate a virtual dugout canoe on the Mississippi River using tablets, with the dome displaying real-time responses to their combined inputs.

• The interactive canoe experience works best when introduced first, before content instruction, as it primes students for deeper engagement.

• The system is built entirely in Unity, independent of commercial planetarium software, using NASA star imagery and the Yale BrightStar Catalog.

• Sharing devices among students unexpectedly enhanced collaboration and peer interaction, turning a logistical constraint into a pedagogical asset.

• The four factors for activating Indigenous presence in technology — community-relevant topic, Indigenous makers, culturally identifiable experience, and radical relationality — guided the project's design.

• Guest educator Jim Rock's exploratory, non-linear teaching style is well-suited to the flexible, student-driven nature of the technology.

• Multisensory engagement (sound of water, tactile planispheres, physical props, movement) deepens student retention and connection to the material.

• The project required significant infrastructure beyond the PPA mini-grant, including donated tablets from Boston Scientific, GIS mapping data, Unity development, and funding from Saint Paul Public Schools.

• Caution around AI use is especially important when working with Indigenous communities due to concerns about data sovereignty and historical misuse of technology.

Topic 1: Interactive Dome Technology--

System Design and Live Demonstration

The centerpiece of the presentation was a live demonstration of a custom-built interactive system that allows middle school students to collectively steer a virtual dugout canoe across a 3D-rendered representation of the Bdote — the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The visualization was built in Unity using GIS topology data from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, NASA high-resolution star imagery for the Milky Way background, and star positions drawn from the Yale BrightStar Catalog. The dugout canoe model was 3D-scanned from a physical canoe built by Indigenous maker Vincent Diaz and incorporated into the scene.

Students interact with the system through Surface tablets donated by Boston Scientific, connected via a local router to the dome computer. The student interface is intentionally minimal — displaying only "Push Canoe," "Paddle Left," and "Paddle Right" — so students can look up at the dome rather than down at their devices. All student inputs are aggregated: the majority direction within each input window determines the canoe's movement, with the magnitude of the majority influencing the degree of turn. This means equal left and right inputs result in straight movement, while a strong majority in one direction produces a sharper turn.

The teacher/operator interface provides additional controls: enabling or disabling student input, overriding student control to manually reposition the canoe, adjusting time of day to reveal stars and constellations, toggling constellation overlays (including Dakota names such as Ahadeshka, Kaya the turtle, Tuine, and Wakiyan), displaying a map of the river system, and triggering supplemental visuals such as an immersive buffalo herd animation intended to convey the historical scale of buffalo populations in Mni Sota Makoce.

The system is entirely independent of commercial planetarium software and runs on a dedicated computer isolated from the school district's network for security purposes.

Relevant Q&A

Question (Andy): With so many students inputting simultaneously, how does the system handle conflicting inputs — could you end up going nowhere?

Answer (Arush/Sarah): Yes, that is intentional and part of the designed chaos. Equal left and right inputs result in straight movement. A majority in one direction produces movement in that direction, with the degree of turn proportional to the size of the majority. Students often discover this organically and begin coordinating with each other.

Question (Andy): If two kids share a tablet, is one designated left and one right?

Answer: No formal designation is required. Students naturally negotiate — sometimes one takes each side, sometimes they race each other, and sometimes they realize they need to coordinate with others across the room.

Question (Katie): Is motion sickness a concern given the first-person perspective and collective steering?

Answer: It has not been a notable issue in practice. The canoe does not bob with waves, which was a deliberate mitigation. The movement is relatively slow, and students naturally look up and down, which may help self-regulate. The experience has not produced more motion sickness than standard planetarium software.

Question (Rosemary): Is the software completely independent of commercial planetarium software?

Answer: Yes, it is built entirely in Unity from the ground up, using publicly available astronomical data sources.

Question (Rosemary): How was the 3D scan of the canoe done?

Answer: A 3D scan gun was used on the physical dugout canoe built by Vincent Diaz. The scan was then imported into the Unity scene. The star system, river topology, and all visual elements were built from scratch within Unity.

Question (Chat): Would this software work with a smaller inflatable mobile planetarium?

Answer: Yes, in principle. As long as there is a computer, a projector, and student devices connected to a local router, the system could function. Some software modifications would be needed, but there are no inherent technical barriers.

Topic 2: Pedagogical Design and Classroom Implementation

Sarah Weaver described the evolution of how the canoe experience is integrated into a broader lesson for middle school students, most of whom have visited the Como Planetarium in earlier grade levels and have also visited the Bdote in fifth grade. Because students are familiar with the space and with Sarah as their teacher, novelty is essential. The interactive canoe experience provides that novelty while also serving as a pedagogical entry point.

The lesson structure that proved most effective begins immediately with the canoe experience, allowing students approximately 10 minutes of exploratory, playful navigation before transitioning to content instruction. This sequence — play first, then teach — was found to prime students for deeper engagement with guest educator Jim Rock's storytelling about Dakota constellations and the cultural significance of the Bdote. Starting with content instruction first, by contrast, produced a more passive experience with less sustained engagement.

During the canoe phase, students are given a single guiding question: which direction are we headed? They use the position of the sun and, as time is advanced, the rising constellations to determine their orientation. This naturally introduces Dakota constellation names and their significance. Jim Rock then leads discussion of specific constellations, stories, and cultural concepts, including Kapemni, while students continue light paddling. His teaching style is exploratory and non-linear, responding to the energy and questions of the students in the room rather than following a fixed script.

The lesson also incorporates multisensory elements: the ambient sound of water as students enter, tactile planispheres featuring Dakota constellations for students to hold and use, audio recordings by a Dakota storyteller, and physical props brought by Jim Rock. Students are asked to stand and measure the sun's angle with their hands, and the planispheres are used to identify constellations as the dome's date and time are adjusted.

Transitions between software (from the Unity canoe scene to Uniview for flying sequences) are managed by having Jim Rock teach a song to students while devices are collected and the system is switched — an elegant use of transition time that keeps students engaged.

The lesson has been delivered most successfully with students from American Indian Magnet School, where a higher proportion of students have Indigenous backgrounds, making Jim Rock's presence especially meaningful. Sarah noted that one student spontaneously recognized the Bdote from the graphics before it was identified, demonstrating the cultural resonance of the visualization.

Relevant Q&A

Question (Andy): Why does doing the interactive canoe experience first work better than starting with content?

Answer (Sarah): The novelty of the experience engages students who have been in the planetarium before. It also gives Jim Rock's teaching time and space, and students seem more primed to listen after a period of active play. The energy arc of the canoe experience — approximately 10 minutes — transitions naturally into attentive listening.

Question (Andy): Do students know the constellations in advance, or do they figure out directions from the sky during the session?

Answer (Sarah): It varies. Some groups have prior background knowledge. In other cases, visual cues or images are provided. The process of figuring it out from the sky is itself part of the learning, and the question of which direction we are headed serves as the anchor inquiry for the session.

Topic 3: Indigenous Cultural Framework and Community Relationships

The project is explicitly grounded in Indigenous cultural values and community relationships, not merely in the use of Indigenous content as subject matter. Sarah and Arush described the four factors for activating Indigenous presence in technology, developed by Sean Doerr, as the guiding framework: community-relevant topic, including Indigenous makers, creating a culturally identifiable experience, and centering radical relationality in design.

The community-relevant topic is Dakota star knowledge and the Bdote. Indigenous makers are included through Jim Rock as educator and storyteller, and through Vincent Diaz, who built the dugout canoe that was 3D-scanned for the visualization. The culturally identifiable experience is grounded in the Dakota practice of telling star stories from a canoe on the river, and in the concept of Kapemni — what is above is also below — which connects the river, the land, and the sky. The Bdote itself is a sacred site just a few miles from the school, and students have physically visited it in fifth grade, making the virtual representation personally meaningful.

Radical relationality refers to the Indigenous understanding that all elements of the environment — rocks, trees, stars — are relatives, and that learning happens through relationship rather than extraction. 

Sarah emphasized that the project is not entertainment or a history lesson, but an expression of ongoing relationships: between Jim Rock and the students, between Jim Rock and the lab, and between the educators and the land they inhabit. Sarah identified herself as a settler on Turtle Island with Scottish, Irish, and Western European heritage, and noted that she approaches this work with humility and a commitment to ongoing learning.

Arush noted that the use of AI in this context would be inappropriate, given Indigenous communities' well-founded concerns about data sovereignty and the historical misuse of technology against them. AI might be used for very high-level, non-sensitive queries, but never for inputting Indigenous data or community knowledge.

The buffalo visualization — an immersive dome-filling animation of millions of buffalo — was described as a uniquely powerful tool for conveying the historical scale of buffalo populations and the impacts of colonization on Dakota ways of life, in a way that no printed image or classroom resource could replicate.

Relevant Q&A

Question (Rosemary): What is radical relationality, and where does the term come from?

Answer (Arush/Sarah): The term is elaborated in the IEEE conference paper referenced during the talk. It draws on the Indigenous understanding that everything in the environment — rocks, trees, stars — has life and is a relative. It emphasizes relationship-centered learning and design, and its specific meaning varies across Indigenous communities and contexts.

Question (Alan): Would you use AI to help develop a web-based version of this system?

Answer (Arush): With significant caution. For general technical questions, possibly. But for anything involving Indigenous data, community knowledge, or code related to this project, no. Indigenous communities are rightly hesitant about AI due to concerns about how their data is used without meaningful consent or reciprocity.

Question (Jeremy): Could a similar approach work for other Indigenous cultural contexts, such as petroglyph sites and trade routes in the high desert Southwest?

Answer (Sarah/Arush): Yes. Unity is a flexible game engine that can model diverse topographies and environments. The key is coupling the technology with community members who can speak to what is currently important to their community, not just what is historically interesting. Tablets could also enable students to draw, annotate, or photograph elements of the experience, opening further interactive possibilities. Sarah noted that Como Planetarium is also exploring how to incorporate nearby petroglyph sites into future visualizations.

Topic 4: Technical Infrastructure, Funding, and Future Directions

The project was built on a foundation of prior work at the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota, including a previous project focused on Micronesian wayfinding that established the star system and astronomical rendering pipeline. Key contributors include Bridger Herman, who processed GIS data and built the Unity river scene; Dan Keefe, the lab's principal investigator, who helped develop the constellation and star system; and Sean Doerr, PhD candidate and Arush's mentor, who developed the Indigenous presence framework and contributed early project work.

The astronomical rendering uses NASA high-resolution imagery for the Milky Way background and the Yale BrightStar Catalog for individual star positions. Planetary and celestial calculations are based on the book Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus (Willmann-Bell Publications). The river topology was derived from GIS data, likely from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and converted into a Unity scene with some manual elevation adjustments by Bridger Herman.

Student devices are approximately 30 Surface tablets donated by Boston Scientific. The planetarium computer runs on a dedicated hard line, isolated from the school district's internal network, with a local router connecting the dome computer, student tablets, and teacher interface. This isolation was required by the school district for security reasons.

Funding sources include the PPA mini-grant, Saint Paul Public Schools (for Jim Rock's compensation), Boston Scientific (tablet donation), and prior lab grants associated with the Micronesian wayfinding project. The PPA mini-grant represented a small fraction of the total investment required.

Future directions discussed include: developing a web-based version of the system accessible via QR code on personal devices; exploring integration with OpenSpace for similar interactive experiences; incorporating petroglyph visualizations; and continuing to refine the lesson structure through repeated implementation with diverse student groups.

Relevant Q&A

Question (Rosemary): Did you start with a 2D map and build elevation in Unity, or use a more complex source?

Answer (Sarah/Arush): The project started with GIS topology data, likely from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which includes elevation. Some manual adjustments were made by Bridger Herman. The area around the Bdote has some canyon-like elevation, though the immediate river confluence area is relatively flat.

Question (Alan): What would it take to make a web-based version, and could OpenSpace be used?

Answer (Sarah/Arush): A web-based version is technically feasible and could use QR codes for device connection. OpenSpace has advanced significantly since the project began and could now be a viable platform for similar experiences. These are areas for future exploration.

Question (Rosemary): Is the IEEE paper openly available?

Answer: A link was shared in the chat pointing to the Interactive Visualization Lab's website, where the paper and related work can be accessed.

• EEE Conference Paper: A paper co-authored by Arush Bothra and colleagues on using interactive computer graphics for Indigenous education contexts. Accessible via the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota website (link shared in chat). Described as approachable for non-technical readers.

• GLIPA Poster: Arush Bothra presented a poster on this project at GLIPA; link included in the presentation slides.

• Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus (Willmann-Bell Publications): The primary reference used to build the star and planetary calculation system within Unity from scratch.

• Minnesota Indigenous Education for All: Minnesota state education framework; link included in the presentation slides for those wishing to understand how the state structures Indigenous education objectives.

• Unity Software: Free game engine used to build the interactive dome visualization. Homepage link included in the presentation slides..

• NASA Star Imagery: High-resolution NASA imagery used as the Milky Way background in the Unity scene.

• Yale BrightStar Catalog: Star position data used to render individual stars within the Unity visualization.

• Jim Rock's Kapemni Video: Available on Vimeo; referenced during the presentation as a key teaching resource on the Dakota concept of Kapemni.

Timestamps are relative

12:40:36 From Rosemary Walling:

Aarush Bothra is a human-computer interaction researcher, computer scientist, and musician at the Interactive Visualization Lab, University of Minnesota. Sarah Weaver is the Director and Teacher for the Cuomo Planetarium in the Saint Paul Public Schools.

12:44:51 From Alan Gould: (Describing the PPA mini grant Sarah received)

Sarah Weaver, Como Planetarium, St. Paul, MN. Pay a computer science graduate student with the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) Interactive Virtual Lab to design interactive technology that enables students to work together to influence visuals on the dome using tablets. For example a virtual canoe that paddles up and down the Mississippi River with students tapping to ‘paddle’ the canoe, with a local indigenous elder and star expert to share knowledge and stories connecting the river and the sky.

13:52:22 From Lindsey Lester TELUS World of Science Edmonton:

I am curious, and my apologies if this was addressed at the beginning, I came in a bit late. Would this type of software and programming work with a smaller, inflatable, mobile planetarium?

13:56:14 From Rosemary Walling:

Mini grant report: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZMoR5DRZBM65mQkED7R9pgWTBiaYJmQU

13:56:38 From Rosemary Walling:

https://www.ppadomes.org/events/online-seminars

https://www.youtube.com/@ppadomes

14:03:19 From Como Planetarium:

https://ivlab.cs.umn.edu/Dorr-2024-Toward.html

14:03:55 From April Whitt to Everyone:

Many thanks!

14:15:20 From Suzy Gurton to Everyone:

Thank you everyone, this is such a fun way to engage with students!

14:20:31 From Rosemary Walling to Everyone:

Kinetarium

14:20:38 From Katie Iadanza to Everyone:

https://www.kinetarium.space/en/home