Last year Universe Awareness reached almost 125,000 children around the world with our activities and resources about the wonders of the Universe. This year, we aim to reach even more, and we're off to a good start; a wide-range of UNAWE activities have already taken place in 2013, from science workshops and festivals to photo exhibitions!
Early this year the Universe in a Box project reached the prototyping phase and 50 toolkits were distributed to educators in 30 countries around the world for testing. Since then, a growing number of activities based around the box have taken place in schools, science centres and museums.
In January a science workshop was organised at the Elia Sarvat English high school, Mumbai (India) based on Universe in a Box activities about the Moon, Earth and Sun system, around 30 children aged 9-11 years attended. The one day workshop was conducted by the Universe in a Box project manager, Jaya Ramchandani and organised by Teach for India representative, Swapneel Rane, it aimed to educate the children about the topics covered and to get them excited about the world around them on a day-to-day basis. The school mainly focusses on Maths and English, and so this was the first full-day science workshop the school had ever held.
In March this year a similar workshop took place at at Trelai Primary School in Cardiff, UK. Edward Gomez, education director of Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, used the Universe in a Box to explore the moon with a group of 56 children of a much younger age range 6-7 years. Activities included inviting the children to compare the size of the Earth and Moon, discover why we see just one side of the moon and study its phases.
Both workshops were a big hit with the attending children. In Mumbai they were asked to write a report on the activities at the end of the session, comments returned were very positive, the children appeared to thoroughly enjoy the day's activities, particularly learning about the Solar System. However, the hosts of both events commented that Universe in a Box activities work best with groups of 10 or so children at a time, more than this and it becomes difficult to control and hold the attention of the entire class.
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