Remember those 2 NASA probes that were launched into space in the 70s? They were meant to study Jupiter and Saturn. After their mission ended, they drifted into space, heading to the general direction of ... the unknown.
NASA officials decided at the time to bolt a gold plaque to the spacecraft, with a message to possible ETs...

This topic is quite interesting for the students, who generally know nothing about it.

First step : discover the Pioneer missions, through comprehension questions to be answered via a NASA Webpage
Second step : discover the Pioneer Plaque and try to understand it as if you were an ET !
Third and final step : see what the drawings on the Plaque actually meant for its designers, and debate their choices.

Here's what I have prepared :
a) an index page showing the questions, with a link to the NASA page (which I have recorded and slightly modified, to make it both more simple and available even off-line), and also a link to the "mute" Plaque.
b) a page with the Plaque (commented). I haven't put a direct link to that on the first page, because I didn't want my students to "cheat" and find the solutions before suggesting anything. So I suggest that you wait until everybody's given their ideas before giving access to the commented plaque.
(NB I've "protected" this page, and you'll need to get the code to access it. Obviously I can send it to you if you're interested, and you can decide whether you give it to your students right away or not. Let me just state this : the code is the name of the page it hides. And since this page comes after "questions01" and "questions02"... Well, if you haven't figured it out write me.)

Additional ideas :

• make them create their own plaque and, of course, justify their choices
• Make them work on the feminist protest at the time, concerning the "passive" attitude of the woman on the Plaque, when the man gets to raise his hand in a gesture of good will !! Stuff can still be found on the Net about that.
• Ask for a biography of Dr Carl Sagan, a very interesting man, scientist and Science-Fiction writer, who was in charge of designing the Plaque.
• Make a WebQuest on outer space exploration! You may want to use this Flash animation.
• Related topic : the Voyager spacecrafts, also carrying a (much more complte) message on a gold record... See a Flash animation here.

Have fun...

Frédéric Chotard