The aim of this project is to bring astronomical material to students and teachers from less favored Chilean public schools in the frame of Asteroid Day 2021. We plan to create and distribute an educational kit in different schools along Chile.
In our experience doing outreach with our initiative “Star Tresâ€, we noticed that many teachers in public schools, while they have motivation, they lack resources and training to implement any class-innovation beyond the basics. For us, as female scientist role models it is important to reach those schools, with exciting activities and educational material to motivate students in this topic.
We plan to create and distribute an educational kit for teachers and students (7-8 years old). The teacher kit is composed of a 3D-printed asteroid model, infographic material, and a detailed workshop manual. The student kit will consist of a tote bag with astronomical material, notebook, pencil and DIY (Do-It-Yourself) materials.
Additionally, we will film a tutorial video on how to make your own asteroid, and a video/talk explaining what asteroids and comets are. This audiovisual material will be available on our website (www.startres.net) and will be distributed in a USB to be sure that everyone has access to this material, even those schools with no internet connection. Finally, we will also offer an online session of questions for teachers before implementing this workshop with their students.
We will run a selection process to choose the 20 most motivated schools in a vulnerable situation along Chile through a simple online contest. Teachers should receive the material to implement the Asteroid Day workshop at least two week in advance, and our online session of questions will be scheduled one week in advance. We will ask the teachers (if resources are available) to share pictures or short videos of the activity with us, which we will proudly share in the Star Tres social media.