'Reaching Out' Initiatives to Secondary Schools Students

[Lester]

Hello everyone!

I am writing this post on behalf of 'The Theoretical Physics and Biology Society' TPBS regarding our intention to co-organise astronomy activities for secondary school students.

For some time, I have heard about Singastro forums and its members raising awareness on astronomy in S'pore from peers and teachers.

My friends and I from our student academic society(registered with MHA) have found interest to continue our education efforts into astronomy for students from the lesser known government schools in S'pore.

So far, for about 1 year & 7 months, The Theoretical Physics and Biology Society (TPBS) has been providing science enrichment sessions for RGS and vjc ip students at no charge.
Our objective is to push on education for the good cause of cultivating “Attitude of the thinking mind” in the student community; as well as to cultivate students with an attitude to discover opportunities and to spur creative thinking in science.

Our suggestion for collaboration can be on the following ideas:

a) Organise theory sessions, before their outfield activities, for the student participants (actually, all are welcome).
b) Preparation of reading/theory materials for their outdoor activities. A newsletter?
c) Form a channel online for “Online teaching”? This can be an effective way to reach out to students through interactive astronomy materials.

It would be very kind of you to link up with me at : committee@tpbsociety.org

Our website is : www.tpbsociety.org

TPBS hopes that there can be possible collaborations with Singastro committee and its members to bring forth Astronomy to more students in S'pore.

Thank you!

Cheers
Lester

[zong]

Hi Lester,

This is a very interesting proposal. I am in favour of it, but my views don't represent Singastro.

However, we are only a group of people working/studying/etc, pursuing astronomy as a hobby, ie. we don't do this as a full time job. Even our activities are mostly done impromptu.

The first thing you have to note is that although we would like to do astronomy outreach, I (at least for me) feel that I am not qualified to "teach" people, in the sense of formal education.

Also, details of your outreach programme are not yet concrete. It would be good to post about specific events, and see how we can help you

[Airconvent]

Hi Lester
It admirable that you are taking this initiative. However, you have to understand Singastro formed from a desire to deviate from the official channels (like TASOS) and be free and easy. Hence formalising the activities would tend to get lower participation.
Also, as far as teaching is concerned, I certainly do not have the credentials to teach. About the 3 people here with real teaching experience would have been Remus, Vincent Snr, Chia YK and Mr Au.
I think some of the school societies also offer talks but nothing like a complete course, I think. But let's see what comes up.

I think your best bet is to leverage on the weekly sessions by Weixing and Clifford and work from there...

cheers

[Lester]

Hi Zong!

I'm pleased to know that you do get interested in astronomy outreaching activities. At this moment, my committee has only brief sketches of how we are going to attempt the out-reaching programmes.

As much as I can be sure of, the out-reaching activities would not be of 'classroom teaching' styles. Instead, we wish to have them to be focused on 'raising awareness' than to involve too much on theory.

Suggestions:
1) To work with members and representatives from Singastro to create a plan.

a) Organise theory sessions, before their outfield activities, for the student participants.
b) Preparation of reading/theory materials for their outdoor activities.
c) Form a channel online for “Online teaching”

2) To link up with schools with a concept plan before proceeding to request for collaboration with Singastro.
a) Tentatively, the planned activity is on 2 astronomy camps per year for the selected school. Activities are drafted to be interactive and non-technical.


Overall, if we just introduce various aspects of astronomy to the students, that would have taken up much time and making it suitable to be of a 3 day camp style of activity. =)

I will tell more to everyone in due time!

Cheers
Lester

*my friends and I are mostly ns guys and some have started uni.

[Lester]

Hello Airconvent!

Thanks for your input! I'm new to the workings of outreaching activities actually, what spurs me is mostly burning passions for education. I will check out the weekly ones and see about it.

[Meng Lee]

If you are talking about astronomy outreach, there is no single person more suitable than Dr Phil Chan of NUS, he has 2 complete beginner's courses in NUS, and numerous talks and courses that he has conducted over maybe 20 years.

He also has yearly astronomy overseas trips for outreach for I think 14 years already. Recently it has become almost tri-monthly, hehe.

You may check out NUS Physics Department website and email him directly.

[Lester]

Hello Meng Lee,

Thanks for your recommendation, i would try to get in touch with Dr Chan soon.

There are others who have emailed me for more details about the outreach activity; I would get in touch with them soon and meanwhile, my committee would have to draft a detailed concept plan. It is best that we work together to organise this activity.

I would post the plan at this topic in due time. =)

Cheers
Lester

[zong]

About the 3 people here with real teaching experience would have been Remus, Vincent Snr, Chia YK and Mr Au.

I think you might need to relearn your maths! Remus, VinSnr, Chia YK, Mr Au are 4 people, not 3

Lester, there are already camps and competitions in Singapore. Think it isn't very wise to do more camps. What I know now is RJC has one that started this year. Ngee Ann Poly had one running for very long, called ANE for secondary school students, and another called AF for JC students, but not sure if it's still alive. As for competitions, the ones running now are by NYP and RJC for secondary schools, and NUS/NTU for secondary and tertiary institutions. I think it has already reached saturation point, at least for those who already are interested and have taken the active decision to go learn more about astronomy. Outreach should focus more on the rest of the students who ask "what, astronomy? you just look at stars, what!". At least, that's my point of view.

[Airconvent]

About the 3 people here with real teaching experience would have been Remus, Vincent Snr, Chia YK and Mr Au.

I think you might need to relearn your maths! Remus, VinSnr, Chia YK, Mr Au are 4 people, not 3

Lester, there are already camps and competitions in Singapore. Think it isn't very wise to do more camps. What I know now is RJC has one that started this year. Ngee Ann Poly had one running for very long, called ANE for secondary school students, and another called AF for JC students, but not sure if it's still alive. As for competitions, the ones running now are by NYP and RJC for secondary schools, and NUS/NTU for secondary and tertiary institutions. I think it has already reached saturation point, at least for those who already are interested and have taken the active decision to go learn more about astronomy. Outreach should focus more on the rest of the students who ask "what, astronomy? you just look at stars, what!". At least, that's my point of view.

haha...thanks zong. I started with 3 and then added Chia YK subsequently.
In anycase, I think its good that interest is being generated in the schools on astronomy with numerous programmes. But once after that, we try to consolidate them into main groups such as TASOS and Singastro because there are too few of us to have too many groupings.

[Lester]

Hi Zong!

Yups, partly, I would agree with your idea that there is much room for us to reach out to students who have never get a chance to attend those camps or competitions before!

My committee's intention is not to draw much focus onto learning theory or practical lessons on astronomy but to incur some kind of curiosity in them- to learn on their own, to ask and to find out more about astronomy. And we do really hope this would encourage them to carry on their new interests to their friends and another batch of students.

Astronomy would be a good theme, however, more to it, my society would pretty much like to discover more about how we can build up the attention on pure sciences in S'pore starting from the students...haha, that would be another issue.

Now, it would be good for me and friends to be realistic and get on with Astronomy as our main theme first.

Cheers
Lester