Check out this article from The Age about the federal government offering Australians the chance to send messages to lifeforms on the planet Gliese 581 d: Dear alien, can I add you to facebook?. We are invited to write messages of 160 character or less - just over the length of a Twitter message - “The messages will be beamed to the planet from NASA’s Tidbinbilla space tracking station, outside Canberra, to mark National Science Week, which starts on Saturday” states the article.

Class idea:
Who knows what languages aliens can understand? Just thought this might be a good little idea for a languages classroom - you could even get the students to write the messages  - either on paper, or by sticking letters together form magazines etc - then take photos of each of the messages to display in a class photo story. The messages could be centred around a particular topic or anything that the students want to ask. The next part of the activity could be students coming up with what they think the answers to the questions would be - which might be good considering the actual messages are not expected to reach their destination for another 20 years…

Some questions the kids could answer:
What would you say to an alien in the language you are learning in 160 characters or less?
What could you tell them about languages?
What one word would you explain to them?

Let me know if you use this idea - I’d love to hear about what your kids come up with!

Image is ‘Space Police 3 - The Bad Guys‘