Designing a spacesuit for the Moon mission

Author: Ferhat Ayranci

Our mission to the Moon continues in our astronomy club, which we have been conducting online during these weeks. As the second part of our ‘The Moon Mission’ project, our future astronauts designed their spacesuits.

During this second phase of our project, we implemented the ‘Let’s Design a Spacesuit’ lesson plan from Space Awareness website. This spacesuit part of our project took 3 weeks to be completed. You can find the lesson plan here.

The plan helped us so well through an inquiry-based lesson flow. In the first 2 weeks, students answered the questions and followed a route towards designing their spacesuits. They first made research and discussed the conditions in space and on the Moon which then led them to drawing a blueprint of their spacesuits.

This part of the lesson helps students revise their data to be able to start their designs

Students presented their work during the third week of the designing phase. They drew their spacesuit design as a homework assignment and presented during our online class.

Continue reading

THERE IS STEM ACTIVITY AT HOME WITH ‘INSTAGRAM LIVE’

Author: Betul Esen

We are STEM teachers in Konya Human School Project.

  • Betül ESEN: Mathematics teacher
  • Filiz ŞENTÜRK: Mathematics teacher
  • Ülkü KALE KARAASLAN: Preschool teacher

Our aim is to increase the interest of teachers, families, and children, who are our education stakeholders, in STEM fields and to develop 21st-century skills. It is very important for us that our children develop their creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, cooperation, critical thinking, problem-solving skills with their family.

Schools have been vacationed in our country due to the Covid-19 outbreak since March 23, 2020. In this process, schools, teachers, students, and parents adapted to the distance education process and started online education. As STEM teachers, we organized live broadcasts via Instagram to reach families and teachers in our city and carry out useful STEM activities with their children at home.

We shared with the necessary materials on social media before the live broadcasts. When the live time came, the children completed the event with their parents at home. After live broadcasts, they shared photos of their work with us at home. In this conclusion, we conducted 3 live broadcasts between 1 April 2020 and 24 April 2020.

Here is our Instagram page.

Continue reading

Applying STEM lessons during online learning

Author: Ferhat Ayranci

We implemented a lesson as an online lesson which was originally designed for classroom. Students learnt about natural disasters via an educational game (stopdisastersgame.org) and designed solutions for their imaginary villages. Their aim in the mentioned game is to protect their villages from different disasters.

https://www.stopdisastersgame.org

Students spent an hour on playing stopdisastersgame which helps students understand the basic characteristics of natural forces and also provides some visual explanation about the preventive ways of negative consequences of natural disasters.

The game focuses on 5 main disasters
Continue reading