Teach Space workshop sparks interest and enthusiasm
Twenty primary school teachers and education experts from ten countries gathered at ESA’s Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, for the Teach Space in Primary Education Workshop on 3 and 4 March. The main objective of the workshop was for ESA to better understand how they can support teachers in primary education.
In order to meet the needs of teachers throughout all ESA Member States, the first day of the workshop was dedicated to identifying common elements of the European curricula. The teachers presented their curricula and brainstormed about the topics they teach. As a result of this exercise, some common elements were identified.
During the second day, different types of educational tools were discussed. The teachers were asked to give advice on both printed educational material and multimedia educational tools. As teaching methods and practises vary throughout Europe, the teachers urged ESA to keep the future teaching tools diverse.
The next step for ESA is to analyse the information and advice given by the teachers. ESA will then define the educational tools to be developed for this target group.
The participants were strongly motivated and were keen to continue the collaboration with ESA, offering to give further advice and feedback. In her evaluation, workshop participant Christina Ekerborn from Sweden said “It has been very interesting and I will go home with a lot of new ideas and energy!”
The teachers were also invited to visit the test facilities and the Erasmus User Centre. Among other things they experienced a Virtual Reality tour of the International Space Station (ISS) and were shown models of the ISS and the different elements of the Space Station.
