UNAWE has been awarded a 15,000 Euro grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), together with an industrial partner – Methodelink. The funds will support a joint venture between the two partners to develop a short educational training movie about a topic in astronomy. The project will contribute to the sustainability of UNAWE and will pilot UNAWE teacher training to exploit new media, such as smartphones and tablets.
The grant has been awarded under NWO’s Creative Industry – Knowledge Innovation Mapping (KIEM) programme, which encourages the development of partnerships between a "knowledge" institution and a creative industrial organization. In this case UNAWE and Leiden University will team with Methodelink, a non-profit organisation that provides an open-access educational portal for primary school teachers, that gives access to videos about a broad range of topics. The Methodelink database is used by more than 60% of Dutch primary schools and therefore has a wide national reach. By transforming UNAWE educational materials into Methodelink videos, Universe Awareness will increase its visibility among Dutch teachers and ensure the preservation of its products for the long-term future.
The new project will also be a stepping stone for UNAWE to new media platforms. The addition of movies in the UNAWE resource repository will enable us to reach a larger target group that is possible with written material and live contacts. The NWO grant will enable UNAWE and Methodelink to develop the first of an envisaged series of videos about a range of astronomical topics. Each movie will be based on a module from the Universe in a Box activity book, explain the theory behind a specific topic (e.g. the Moon) and will suggest some concrete classroom activities.
The two partners will start producing the first of these movies during the next few months, with a delivery date in April 2015. The project will be a giant step forward in UNAWE’s mission of bringing astronomy into the classroom of every Dutch primary school.
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