EVANDER – Mr Hideo Nakano, a science specialist at the Osizweni Education and Development Centre, returned from the fifth International Conference on Science and Mathematics Education (CoSMEd) hosted by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation-Regional Centre for Education in Science and Mathematics (Seameo Recsam) on Penang Island in Indonesia recently.
More than 400 teachers, researchers, tertiary students and government delegates attended the conference.
The theme was “Empowering the Future Generation through Science and Mathematics Education”.
Mr Nakano conducted educational toy workshops on 29 and 30 October and on 7 and 8 November.
More than 30 Indonesian trainees took part in the first workshop and 21 teachers, science trainers and mathematics trainers took part in the second workshop.
“The contents of the workshops were designed along the concept of ‘Universal design for learning science’ because the most important mission of these workshops was to introduce low-cost and locally available educational materials suitable to any pupils and teachers across the globe,” said Mr Nakano.
Participants of the first workshop consisted of 30 secondary school science and mathematics teachers and an official from the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia.
They learned the latest educational theories and practical activities under Customised Courses for Indonesian Science and Mathematics Educators from 21 October to 15 November 2013.
The second workshop consisted of two primary school teachers, five secondary school teachers, eight teacher training college lecturers, a curriculum development officer and five Recsam specialists.
Mr Nakano held discussions and demonstrations about the expansion of air (simple fountain), straw Cartesian diver, Roto-copter, straw molecular models, paper blade helicopter (Taketombo), new paper blade helicopter and various science activities.
He also conducted another workshop, Hands-On Life Science Workshop, during the conference.
This was aimed at helping participant to understand effectiveness of inexpensive life science teaching aids, visualise micro phenomena, structures and hidden organ layout through paper craft activities and make a microscope using a recycled plastic sheet.
The workshop provided each participant with low-cost life science activities such as animated cell division simulations of mitosis and meiosis, a paper craft activity of 3D human organ layout, observation of onion epidermal cells through a water lens microscope and another craft work of a paper DNA model.
Each participant cut, folded and pasted templates to finish the life science craftworks and use a recycled plastic sheet, collected from an ordinary water bottle, to make a simple microscope.
Mr Nakano also demonstrated a simple respiratory system model and an osmosis experiment idea.
