In August, we asked you if astronomy should be included in middle school or high school curriculums through our Astronomy.com Online Poll. The results overwhelmingly favored including astronomy as either a mandatory or an optional course. Well, even though many schools still don’t include astronomy as a mandatory course (or offer it at all), there are some great computer tools that now educate and let users participate in active research.

In its 13th issue, the Astronomy Education Review (AER), a web-based journal about astronomy education and outreach, has an article that shares some of the best computer-based learning offered through distributed computing. In “Astronomy@Home,” author George S. Mumford of Tufts University describes four web-based programs that allow astronomy students of all ages to have a “hands on” experience with the science.

Many people already know about Galaxy Zoo, a project that enables the greater community to participate in astronomy research online. Just this past August, a Dutch schoolteacher discovered a mysterious astronomical object using the program. In addition to this popular project, there’s Clickworkers, where users search for interesting martian surface features by looking at pictures taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Here at the office, we’ve had difficulty accessing the Clickworkers homepage. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. From home, however, we encountered no such difficulty. For whatever reason, we are able to access the Dawn Mission Clickworkers site with no problem.

Stardust@Home asks volunteers to help uncover the first pristine interstellar dust particles ever brought to Earth; and Systemic, a site that educates users about the hunt for exoplanets.

And even if you don’t have the time to participate in one of these programs, Mumford suggests some other programs (like Einstein@Home, that use your computer to help power research when you aren’t using it. So instead of just having spectacular astroimages pop up on your computer while it sits idle, it could be processing data from different cosmology theories.