Schools, sustainability and smelling of skin

I actually played down the numbers from yesterday; we managed to entertain approx. 400 children in shifts at a school in Accra from 8 am - 1pm and then a theatre group in the afternoon. Both were very different audiences and highlighted some of the challenges of teaching science in Ghana. 


The international school children were interested and quick to ask questions but had limited knowledge of the Universe and were excited to make constellations and Apollo Command modules. At the theatre group it was an entirely different story and we had to quickly adapt our dry presentation to overcome the language barrier and the fact it was the middle of the day. 


So we used drama to recreate the big bang, black holes and the solar system (with balloons!) and went on to have a much livelier session. This gave us an insight into how an outreach tour to rural communitites would be like though - language problems, limited knowledge of astronomy and a mix of ages and abilities. 


Which leads me nicely on to what will happen next. There is a real appetite for astronomy in Ghana and science in more general so it seems a shame to leave it here. With the Institute of Physics opening a centre and training science teachers as well as interest in planetaria from other West African countries we're starting to think about what to do next.It was great meeting the University students and getting the infrastructure in place for further study but to have an impact, astronomy and an interest in science needs to reach children before they give up on science at school or choose their A-level equivalents. 


So watch this space and if you've enjoyed this blog and have some ideas or interests in this area then please get in touch. 


And finally, the smelling of skin...this happened in Akwidaa at the coast where an eight year old who had grabbed my Obruni (white person) hand and subtly tried to smell me to see if I was different. She then took one step further and tried rubbing her arm onto mine to see if the colour would transfer to my arm. She looked quite bemused when I stayed the same colour...ah well. 


So adieu, goodbye and see you all soon for more adventures. 


Laura

Cape Coast Craziness

Location: Cape Coast University

Audience: 200+ students

Timings: sunset - 9.30 ish

Programme: Videos, interactive quiz, star gazing

Skies: Clear!

Cape Coast University ended up being a hastily prepared event. The student in charge of organising the evening decided to deputise to someone else 3 hours in advance so we arrived at CC with no audience, a common room to set up in (where the students were relaxing in front of films already), and no discernable physics society presence. 

Obviously the best way to counter this was to migrate to the amphitheatre outside in the middle of the halls (a cross between an American jail and a London estate with the same amount of heckling) and set up the projector on a wall, go round with a megaphone and play dodgy highlife/ crank music at full blast through the magical appearance of some HUGE speakers. It did the trick as we played a galaxy video and by the end of 10 minutes there were more than 200 students. 

It was raucous and lively as we asked lots of questions and they started getting into it by throwing out answers and equally perplexing questions. For me the highlight came when I was using Stellarium (Google it - it's free software that shows you the sky at night and you can set the location, time and direction) and I pointed out on the screen where Mars was and then pointed to it in the sky and the place almost erupted! It was like Essien had scored the winner in the World Cup for the Black Stars. It was quite a mind shift to discover that the students hadn't connected one of our planets with the red circle in the night sky (if you haven't seen it then defintely have a look)!

We then headed out to view the stars and the Moon on the athletic field (where coincidentally there were prayer meetings going on and lots of people speaking in tongues and dancing around...very bizarre!! The irony of science and religion colliding was not lost on us). We decided not to leave the telescope with the students this time as the support and infrastructure was not in place to make use of it.

As it turned out, we've donated the telescope and two pairs of binoculars instead to the new science centre at Ada, which was opened today by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (President of the UK Institute of Physics). They are training science teachers and established a large resource centre to offer astronomy GCSE so it seemed a much better choice for now. 

Finally, last weekend we also tried to do a similar talk at the University of Legon outside Accra but it fell through at the last minute due to power (lack of), technicians (too tired to help) and generators (too expensive to hire) not to mention a lack of audience. Instead Emmanuel (who works at the planetarium and is a student at Legon) stood outside the halls encouraging students to come and look at the stars and we set up the telescopes for them to look through. This turned out to be a grand method and we actually reached well over a hundred students and were able to have lots of exciting discussions about life on other planets etc, which we wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. 

It was a busy few days, but I feel we've achieved one of our aims of stimulating the students to become interested and encouraging the professors to start astronomy degrees. The next stage is to engage younger students who wish to study science and hope that the infrastructure is there by the time they reach university age. There's a lot we can say about STEM skills being underrated by the younger generation in Ghana - the same problems as in the UK but the country starts needing to train more of it's own if it doesn't want to rely on foreigners coming in to run, for example, the huge oil fields they've found offshore. 

Next post...how to entertain 120 6 year olds...