– Report by Thilina Heenatigala and photos by Lina Canas.
Inspiration and cooperation sum-up the day two of Astronomy@myBackPack & Astronomy@myPC training workshops. More teachers made their way to Volos to join the workshops. The day started with a wonderful insight into the “Life Cycle of Stars” -including our own Sun’s faith. This followed by a session on “World Wide Telescope” – a phenomenal resource for teachers around the world. Participants learned how they can explore the universe within few clicks. Possibilities of creating lessons plans using WWT are endless.
After a brief break, Babak Tafreshi Director of The World At Night (TWAN) took the stage giving a talk on “Astrophotography in Education”.
Image credit: “Astronomer’s Dream” by Babak A. Tafreshi / TWAN
“We often try to make people understand why we choose astronomy as an educational resources, as an inspirational source. Science is diverse, but why do you use astronomy. TWAN session perfectly exemplified our motive, where ever we come from, Sri Lanka, Portugal or South America, we all share the sky” said Philippe Kobel, an astronomy educator from Switzerland. “There’s a message of peace in TWAN, something we need to reflect in our own activities. As teachers, it’s our duty to teach not only science, but humanity to our students” Kobel further added.
Lunch was followed by the Go-Lab Participatory Design – a portal teachers can design lesson plans. Many positive feedback received to this new addition to the workshop. Teachers expressed how easy it was to use Go-Lab to create lessons. José Gonçalves, a teacher from Portugal shared his views; “I have used quite a lot of repositories to access and create resources, but I really like the guided steps of Go-Lab. It makes our work easy and more flexible.”
The concluded with few keynote speakers; Dr. Angelos Lazoudis of Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Prof. Ton de Jong of University of Twente, Dr. Rosa Doran of NUCLIO and Dr. Sofoklis Sotiriou of Ellinogermaniki Agogi who further inspired the teachers to continue their work with an encouragement to take action, make more use of the tools available.
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