NANOINVENTUM: APPROACHING NANOTECHNOLOGIES AND SCIENCE TO PRIMARY SCHOOL
Nanoinventum is a scientific co-creation project, based on disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics – STE(A)M – aiming to introduce nanotechnology in primary school. The main objective is to create a model for a nanorobot, based on the knowledge of different scientific topics, such as nanotechnology, matter, atoms and molecules, adapted to the curriculum. The project uses strategies like co-creation, design thinking and concept maps. The project’s pedagogical approach works with different areas of the curriculum through didactic demo activities that attract the interest of school pupils and enhance their competences through reasoning, deduction, play and key roles.
Nanoinventum is a scientific co-creation project, based on disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics – STE(A)M – aiming to introduce nanotechnology in primary school. The main objective is to create a model for a nanorobot, based on the knowledge of different scientific topics, such as nanotechnology, matter, atoms and molecules, adapted to the curriculum. The project uses strategies like co-creation, design thinking and concept maps.
The project seeks on one hand to involve students in the co-creation of research materials, thus getting to know a new technology for the future, and on the other hand, working together as a team, assimilating work in research and development that is increasingly based on multidisciplinary, which favours interaction with other team members and audiences. The project’s pedagogical approach works with different areas of the curriculum through didactic demo activities that attract the interest of school pupils and enhance their competences through reasoning, deduction, play and key roles.
The project deals with a series of successive activities that are based on a didactic progression map and educational resources, with the aim of obtaining an artefact based on a NANOROBOT that is able to develop an application for the future. Participants must submit a drawing or a model made with recycled materials with brief explanations of their proposals.
The first edition of the NANOINVENTUM project was developed and deployed in springtime 2017, in the frame of the Festival Nacional de Nanodivulgación, 10alamenos9 [7]. All along the 2018/19 school term, the project was applied in 5 schools in the area of Barcelona (220 students). 3 schools engaged the first edition of the project (6 primary school groups, 130 students): during this period of time, and by using the NANOINVENTUM webpage [5], 36 different ideas/applications aroused. All of them were published in the NANOINVENTUM webpage and shared in social networks.
2018/19 edition was devised to have a more ambitious scope: the calendar widened so as to better suit the needs of 5 schools that produced 52 different ideas/applications/proposals, periodically published in the NANOINVENTUM webpage and social networks. Then, specialists in scientific divulgation, didactics, development of activities and research in N&N implemented the projects in the classrooms. The project ended with a Scientific Fair in the frame of the Festival Nacional de Nanodivulgación, 10alamenos9, 2019 edition. During the 2019/20 school term, the project was reedited. During November 2019, a training course was implemented and in February 2020 a meeting with teachers took place so as to provide them with the Nano kit NANOEXPLORA [8] and to initiate the classroom work. Results are summarized in [9] and [10].
NANOINVENTUM’s main goal is to incorporate science and technology in primary schools. In practical terms, we intend that students to create a model of a nanorobot by using the skills and knowledges acquired during the development of the NANOINVENTUM project. We truly want kids to be familiar with science, to enjoy it, to wake up their love for it with the ultimate goal of feeding their interest for science and to improve their scientific knowledge.
NANOINVENTUM offers a didactic proposal in consecutive steps. First of all, specific training is provided to teachers, which are furnished with didactic and experimental tools (most of them highly innovative) to deal with N&N concepts in the classroom. The consecution of the training process and application in real educative environments results in the generation of didactic charts, written in a collaborative basis between teachers and students, with specific proposals that aim to generate N&N challenges. Final products will be ultimately shown in a scientific fair that will simulate a scientific meeting.
2.1. Phases of the project
The project is divided in a series of consecutive steps:
2.1.1. Training of the teachers
Teachers will participate in a formative session, where the key points of the project will be thoroughly discussed. Theoretical and practical contents will be provided, so as to be straightforwardly implemented in the classroom. This sessions will be held in collaboration with the Centre de Recursos i Innovació Pedagògica de la Generaltat de Catalunya (CESIRE). So as to correctly deploy the activities, didactic charts will be created in the shape of progression maps [11] in order to provide teachers with suitable tools to explain N&N concepts. These charts will include the basic notions to understand the atom, the molecule, the properties of matter, the influence of shape and size, etc.
2.1.2. Training of students
The final goal is for the students to create a N&N-based project. To do so, a didactic toolbox called NANOEXPLORA will be used. The toolbox holds the materials to perform 8 different experiments that exemplify the key points of the present project: What is nanotechnology, what is a nanorobot, what are nanomaterials, atoms and molecules and so on. The webpage of the project will be used as a backup and support platform where divulgative materials will be published.
2.1.3. Visit of a so-called NanoExperta (and redaction of the nanorobot charts and documentation)
During 4 days, a range of activities about N&N will be performed and models of the final projects will be manufactured by the students. A divulgator and expert about N&N will accompany the students in a fascinating journey across the Nano world, showing them a selected variety of real projects to exemplify the interdisciplinary and disrupting extent of this discipline. The third phase will be completed with a co-creation workshop that will bring birth to the projects designed by the students.
Multidisciplinary teams of 4 students will be created and each member of the team will hold a specific function (an image of the chart that teams will work on is included). The roles are as follows:
· Team leader (preferably a girl): it coordinates the team and presents the results to the audience. She describes the problem and its main characteristics and exposes the solution proposed by the team.
· Production manager: the production manager designs the model and picks up the correct materials to bring the project to life.
· Research manager: the research manager describes and analyses the problem to be solved and chooses the correct scientific tools to do so.
· Communication manager: the communication manager is in charge of the redaction of a document that summarizes the characteristics of the project itself. Publication of results and evaluation.
2.1.4. Publication of results and evaluation.
Each team will present a final project to be assessed and evaluated by Nano experts. The finalists will record a video explaining their proposal. These videos will be published in our YouTube channel.
2.1.5. Presentation of results (Scientific Contest).
The project manager will present the results and the final models. The finalists will be selected, having in mind the following items: scientific proposal quality, innovation degree, communication and design.
NANOINVENTUM tackles the goal of changing the vision that primary school students have about science. After the whole process, they consider that science is something natural and challenging. The project succeeds in waking up interest about science and technology and STEAM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics), improving their skills and chances of success in the academic and professional spheres and boosting their will to participate, to innovate and to create by means of artistic activities. The project highly underlines the key role of girls, historically underrepresented in these kinds of disciplines. A whole variety of didactic strategies are deployed, as could be team working, Design Thinking (an innovative methodology) and progression maps. The project deploys a series of consecutive activities based on a didactic chart that underlines the evolution of the project and on educative resources that point towards the manufacturing of a “Nano invention”, designed to fulfil a specific function in the future. The project holds to a set of main guidelines: Education, Divulgation, Ethics, Science and Arts.
Besides, the project aims for a set of secondary goals: a) the development of a logical and independent thinking in students that helps us to take rational decisions, to solve conflicts and to consolidate the necessary skills to tackle daily life situations; b) To Boost scientific vocations in young girls and to encourage them to actively participate in scientific activities; c) To train both students and teachers to high standards of scientific knowledge, while providing educators with tools and activities that promote a dynamic and attractive vision of science and technology as a suitable complement of academic curricula; d) To teach science by performing experiments based on scientific thinking, as a rightful and necessary complement of theoretical contents.
NANOINVENTUM encourages personal and team-based initiative, originality and creativity to respond to problems, develops the paramount “learning to learn” skill, putting into practice experimental experiences, observations and researches that let students to get closer to the world of science, mind storming together and team working, always with a multidisciplinary scope. Besides, NANOINVENTUM promotes:
The ability to think in a logical and independent way, to solve conflicts and to acquire the necessary resources to tackle daily life challenges.
· The processing of daily life knowledge so as to to give it a new significance.
· Opportunities to develop scientific vocations and to promote interests.
· The engagement of young girls in the path of science and technology.
· Team working. Two minds are more than the sum of their individual potentialities.
· Experimentation as a key component of knowledge.
· The fact that we must deal with real problems together and find solutions together. Doing so, and step by step, we learn to apply our creativity to real life, which becomes a key skill for the future.
· The demystification of the Pygmalion effect, where sciences are regarded as difficult but necessary for the development of professional careers.
From a didactic point of view, the project promotes the introduction of scientific-technological concepts by means of the so-called “progression maps”, that is, charts where concepts are introduced in a consecutive and progressive way and in a pre-established logical order. From a scholar point of view, the introduction of concepts will benefit from ludification, game and interpersonal interactions to facilitate the assimilation of concepts.
NANOINVENTUM promotes the interest for observation and generation of scientific questions and provides the necessary scaffolding to produce coherent answers based on well-known scientific facts. It uses materials, instruments and specific laboratory techniques, keeping in mind security and operational instructions. NANOINVENTUM is devised to be applied in the second part of primary school and adapts to legal curriculum
We firmly believe that this project, being oriented towards primary education students, may boost interest for science and may contribute to break gender stereotypes, leading to an increase in the number of feminine careers in college degrees where their presence is, even today, very sparse, as is the case of engineering, mathematics and physics. In this sense, an important part of the proposed contents devised to deal with ethical and social aspects of nanotechnology will focus on the urgent need to provide an egalitarian access to new technologies.
3. Progression Map
NANOINVENTUM is a scientific co-creation project that intends to introduce N&N in the primary school classrooms. By means of experimentation and progression maps a whole range of scientific concepts are introduced. After that, work teams are formed and roles are chosen. Then, with the help of provided materials, the students create a model based on nanotechnological concepts designed to solve a future problem. The singularity of the present project lies in the fact that all this knowledge will be introduced and presented to very young students, that is, in primary school, a special moment of life where scientific vocations begin to build up. Besides, NANOINVENTUM offers new tools so as to approach STEAM disciplines, like the toolbox with didactic experiences based on a progression map that sets a progressive and comprehensive way for students to apprehend the nanotechnological concepts. Finally, the experimental work is complemented by an artistic part that boosts creativity and breaks frontiers between disciplines, promoting a less intimidating regard on science.
NANOINVENTUM is intimately bounded to the academic curriculum and expert assessment has been considered. The basic competences that students develop while progressing through NANOINVENTUM are: a) To make questions about the environment and immediate surroundings, applying strategies of data research and data analysis so as to reach scientific answers; b) To consider social issues while interpreting causes and consequences, proposing answers for the future; c) To use materials in an efficient way by means of scientific and technological criteria so as to solve daily life issues; d) To design simple machines and to use artefacts in a safe and efficient way; e) To adopt good habits about the acquisition and use of goods and services by applying social and scientific knowledge and promoting a responsible consumption; f) To generate interest in observation and in the generation of coherent scientific questions; g) To design and put into practice experiments. To analyse and communicate results; h) To use materials and specific laboratory techniques considering security aspects.
The didactic approach combines theory (training for teachers) and experimentation (hands-on work by the students using the Nano kit NanoExplora). This Nano kit is the first to be specifically designed for primary school and is intimately linked with the progression map that paves to way to a thoroughly learning of nanotechnology concepts.
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP5DyfRoscU
Web 1:https://nanoinventum.blogspot.com/p/inicio.html
Web 2: www.nanoinventum.com
Blog: https://nanoforkids.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @nanoinventum
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