They help teachers, kids connect to Science in real world

BENGALURU: Wonder what Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who holds the world record of 9.58 seconds for 100 metres, has to do in a Physics classroom? The fastest person ever timed is one of the many real life examples that trainers at Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bengaluru depend to explain concepts like speed and velocity.

The planetarium has been holding activity workshops for teachers for the past two decades to make teaching and also learning, more fun-filled and interactive activity. The best lesson many teachers have learnt: If boring and complicated textbook problems are put into real life situations, the result can be mindboggling.

The planetarium holds six to seven workshops in a year across the state and helps teachers with various classroom aids. These workshops help teachers in making students understand the concepts and theories in their science text books in a very demonstrative way.

"Around 35 teachers from both private and government schools are given training. They are enlightened about concepts and theories from various chapters of Science and Mathematics textbooks. Most teachers love attending our workshops; even when schools showed little interest, teachers turned up paying from their own pockets," said Dr BS Shylaja, director, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium.

Making both teaching and learning interesting is important for teachers because today's students are more inquisitive and exposed to various sources of knowledge other than textbooks.

"When astronomy was introduced in higher secondary Science curriculum, most teachers had no clue about the subject. Almost every school at that time requested for a workshop on astronomy for teachers. While teaching about gravitation, students would also want to know about gravitational waves, the recent biggest discoveries in the history of space science. he mysterious spacetime ripples known as gravitational waves, and what their discovery would mean for astronomy. If a student wants to know about it, the teacher can't say that's not in the syllabus. Our training aims to help them keep in touch with latest developments in the field of Science and equip them face any questions in classrooms," Shylaja added.

At present, the planetarium has 3 faculty members who are training the teachers.

and the concepts which are discussed are from any of the chapters of the State board's science syllabus.

"Teachers need to enrich their knowledge. Some ideas are abstract and teachers find it difficult to convey it to students in a simple and interactive way. The response to the workshop has been overwhelming. There are teachers who travel all the way from places like Chikkaballapur, Nelamangala and Tumakuru for the daylong workshop. We usually give concession to those who display indomitable spirit to learn," said HR Madhusudan, senior scientist officer at the planetarium.

The workshop is a boon for teachers who are associated with NGOs like Prajayatna which work with the government to reach out to children in remote rural areas. Educators are given ideas for experiments to make teaching topics like mechanics, Newton's law of motion, radioactivity, electronics and trigonometry more interactive, he added.

"We want more teachers to upgrade their knowledge about Science. This is a great platform for both learning and teaching," Madhusudan added.