Sunday 17 November 2013

UNAWE 13

The explorable story has come to Heidelberg, Germany to take part in the Universe Aware International Workshop 2013. The where are you from map had pins in over 50 different countries and a wide range of cultures and backgrounds were represented from Student Ambassadors from South America and university lecturers from Europe to outreach workers from observatories in Australia to name but a few!



We were welcomed by Pedro Russo and the UNAWE team to the highly appropriate venue of the Haus der Astronomie - a building designed in the exact shape (but not height) of spiral galaxy M53 (a surveyors nightmare, but an architecture fan's dream!) The central planetarium-come-lecture theatre is wrapped by a helical walkway connecting every level of the building and rooms with fantastic views into the forest of the mountain.


The first afternoon was an opportunity to share resources with other educators at a resources fair. A group of local kindergarteners joined us to try them out too. We had our plasticine ready and I spent an enjoyable time with the children as they used their models to show me what they would like to find if they went exploring. One child shared that they would like to fly using a rocket pack to Venus - perhaps by the time they are old enough to embark upon such missions the technology will be there! It is quite fascinating that neither of us could speak more than 4 words of each other's language yet we were able to have an exchange of ideas by connecting through our joint interest in science and playing.

For the rest of the mornings, UNAWE had arranged a series of talks on the key themes of early childhood development, global astronomical curricula development and the importance of evaluation. We also had the chance to see some of the work done by UNAWE across the globe.


I was particularly impressed by the work done by UNAWE with street children in Brazil - children who can only see the moon at night when they look up due to the levels of light and who probably don't get the chance because of their living situation. These children were being taught in a practical way to understand physics and as they returned regularly to the education setting they were offered the chance to move away from the streets. A science education was leading to them having more stability and safety in their lives.

In the afternoons we split into three working groups to look more closely at the three themes. I worked with the Early Childhood Development group to look at how Educational Psychology could help us understand how children learn through different activities. It was useful as a teacher to re-visit some of the theory I had learnt in university but also to see how the understanding of how children learn had changed since I was learning. It is always nice to refresh upon these things and to actually take time to reflect upon my own teaching - school is such a busy place there is rarely the time to do it properly.


On the Friday it was time for me to present to the conference about the Explorable Story project. My brief stint at the front of the lecture theatre whizzed past (it's amazing how much you can say in a short time when the audience listen - a contrast to some of my classes!) I managed to share how the project began as a hack with children from one of my schools and how it developed by collaborating with volunteers around the world. I even managed to recruit a few more translators for the project!

The week was very interesting and fantastic for meeting like-minded people. Many thanks to Pedro and the UNAWE team for organising the week.


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