Teaching Science Playful with Low cost/Long term school Labs

Good science-education at schools do not requiere expensive implementation. Good enough resolution of ad hoc setups is more than enough.

Problem we are committed to solve

Most of Peruvian's schools have serious problems regarding science education since always; their science courses do not have laboratory practices. Cells, chemical explosions or white light decomposition in several colors are not seen, they are being told by the teacher to the students. That is due to the fact that education programs in Peru do not train future teachers to perform laboratory practices at schools.It certainly influences young and adults people appreciation / understanding of sciences and their appreciation of the importance of science for our country. 

Proposed solution: 

Our solution proposes to promote teachers enjoy the lab experiences while playing and learning doing physics, chemistry or biology experiments by their own .

Each experience will be done in three sections:

Experience 1-session 1

The teacher will be allowed to invite a child from his family (daughter, son, or any other relative) to the lab. Using some commercial kits and devices, teachers will be invited to play with the children while showing and teaching them the science involved in the kits or instruments. The presence of the children is expected to help the teacher to feel more confortable to start playing in the lab. 

Experience 1-session 2

The next session will be centered on how to build low-cost versions of the commercial kits and equipments they used in the first session with the children. 

• This session will be guided by a local scientist and engineer who have adequate knowledge and interest to train teachers on how to build some basic low-cost devices.
• Here, only general knowledge necessary to build the setup will be given to the teachers while the overall aspects of the set up including type of materials, form,.. etc and all other details will need to be thought by the own teacher under training who could still discuss with the instructor and use some printed material or the internet.

Experience 1-session 3

A second child will be invited to repeat the session 1 experiences with the teacher using the low-cost device or kits developed by the teachers. 

Participating teachers will be offered a “3-year associateship “ to the NGO, which will allow them to have free academic support to continue the development of their school lab. This membership would need to be renewed every 3-years based on the interest and efforts of the teacher to promote science experiments in their schools.

How our solution could change the world

I believe that several other low and middle income countries in the world may have problems in their country as described above for Peruvian's schools science teaching, for similar reasons.

Our NGO propose to offer long-term company for participating teacher in order to offer the academic support and guidance when they require it. In that way teacher who want to continue developing more devices to implement their school labs would always have an appropriate support from appropriate local scientist and engineers who have the knowledge to help the teachers. 

We want to promote teacher enjoying experimental sciences by promoting them to play with the experiments. We consider that the participation of a children (a teacher´s relative) is an innovative way to help those teacher to freely play with the science if they did have the costume to do it before. Also, this proposal to use ad hoc simple devices  done by the same teachers offering good enough precision or quality would also allow to get acceptable expected experience´s quality  enough for school education level.

In order to implement the different low cost devices, teachers will need to learn about some accesible technologies usually associated to sciences or engineering. For example, teachers will need some training in electronics, optics, .. etc; which means to know how to work with basic integrated circuits, lasers,... etc.

Over the next 12 months we aim to make the pilot phase this project with teachers from two low-resources schools. Our main goal is that participating teachers become more willing to play in the science lab and enjoy experimentation in order to implement happy science teaching, because it certainly involve happy learning students.

Secondarily, we expect that after the training period the participating teachers would be able to build their own basic devices, so they can use them in their future classes at their schools.

In 3 to 5 years I expect that this project continue but being head by the Ministry of Education of Peru while we continue as a supportive organization. That is because, with the expected final good results of the pilot phase, we plan to propose the Ministry of Education to head this project, in order to allow to expand this project to more schools in Peru.

The best associate teachers will be invited to participate in future programs helping to train new teachers. 

The associate membership to our NGO would be free of cost for teachers and ir will allow them several academic benefits between otherss, we expect a close long-term relation with the more motivated teachers to do experimental science teaching.

Since I am applying with a project Idea, at the moment I am not currently serving any school or teacher.

In 12 months I would like to develop my idea with teachers from Lima and suburbs. I expect that it would participate around 2 to 3 teachers per school. A first estimate is that in each school at least 40-120 students will be benefited by allowing them to have laboratory practices in their school.

I believe that for many schools in low or middle income countries such as Peru and others, this can represent an unique opportunity to offer them to implement a science lab for their students.

We are perseverant and have real interest on the success of this project.

We both love and enjoy science experiments. 

We can contact other scientist and engineers with adequate experience to participare to this project.

We understand and agree that in order to succeed with this important project idea, we need to invest time and effort.

it is not an skill but it is important to mention that we are scientist (a physicist and a chemist) with a PhD in Life Sciences and in Chemistry, respectivelly.

We team work enjoy sciences, we would be very happy to make this project a reality. Our NGO expect to look apply for international funds to be able to cover all expenses related to this project including the long-term support we want to offer to future associate teachers.

The most majority ofPeruvian schools need some help regarding experimental science teaching. This is a niche we want to take.

I have had this idea in mind since a couple of years ago, but I did not have the opportunity to make it reality. Even thought I consider this idea can potentially help schools in my country I could not find a way to develop this idea further. Once I knew about SOLVE I immediately thought: I need to try this start. 

Without adequate funding, we could not take any step. SOLVE is a good opportunity to find help to move further from just the idea.

It is not easy to convince the Ministry of Education of new ideas. That is why we want to make the proof of concept which could allow us to talk more seriously with the authorities of the Ministry of Education of Peru.