The educational day was aimed at teachers from basic and secondary schools and kindergartens in La Serena and other communities in the region.
In seeking to contribute to the training of teachers, providing key content that allows a deep understanding of the total solar eclipse on July 2, the University of La Serena, through the Scientific Dissemination Team of the Vice-Rector's Office for Research and Postgraduate Studies, Together with the Research and Development Directorate, it held the “Educators for the Eclipse” workshop, aimed at teachers from different educational establishments of the Gabriel González Videla Municipal Corporation of La Serena and other communes in the Coquimbo Region.
There were more than 60 teachers, from different specialties, belonging to educational establishments in La Serena, Coquimbo, Vicuña and our own Institution, who participated in different talks and educational didactic activities, with which they sought to provide knowledge regarding the eclipse and astronomy, and how to transmit it to the students of their schools.
Alejandra Leyton, Coordinator of the ULS Scientific Dissemination Team, referred to the importance for the University, within its social role, of generating instances like these. “It is important to convene teachers and be able to carry out this type of training workshops, so that they can later transfer this knowledge to their students, because it is the children who are most interested in the topic of the eclipse and who should have this knowledge,” stated the professional about this activity, in which glasses were also provided to observe the eclipse.
For Cristián Salinas, professor of Mathematics and Physics at the American School of La Serena, it is important that the University organizes activities of this type, where knowledge is transmitted to the community. “I think it's great that the University of La Serena is committed to providing knowledge to the community, especially with phenomena such as the solar eclipse, which arouses a lot of interest in people and especially in children and young people, which demonstrates the commitment it has. the house of studies with the region,” he said.
The presentations and activities were led by astronomers Marcelo Jaque, Guillermo Damke and Pablo Muñoz, and the Master of Education Sciences, Sue Ugalde.
This workshop is part of the various initiatives that the University of La Serena develops jointly with the Municipality of La Serena and the Gabriel González Videla Municipal Corporation, focused on bringing knowledge about this topic to the community.
Written by Tomás Rodríguez, DirCom
This activity allows for combining training knowledge with that necessary to acquire for professional development. Given this, the Director of the Law degree, Mg. Carlos Magna assured that “for the legal training process of our students, courses like these are irreplaceable, since they present us with an enriching dialogue between basic training subjects such as Roman Law and professional training subjects such as Civil law".
"The initiative seeks to recover the meaning of education, but in a different way, which is not about breaking with tradition, but rather giving it a new reorientation, where our education and schools begin to think more about the family, the environment , in the boy and girl, in what it means to be educated in a community and not only through content in a classroom. That is why this meeting also opens the doors to ethnicities, to sounds, to art, to expression, to emotions, to thought, and to everything that is part of the human being, but that is generally not considered in schools." , highlighted the academic of the Department. From Education, Silvia López de Maturana, who together with the Director of Teaching, Yanola González and Professor Carlos Calvo (former ULS academic), were the promoters of bringing this experience to the facilities of the University of La Serena.
For the rest, the meeting considered various spaces for political, academic, social and cultural reflection, called tribes, in which the participants worked on various educational proposals around the three axes of the meeting, which were finally shared in plenary sessions. Recreational activities were also carried out, which were soaked in music and biodance.
Mariano Rodríguez, co-creator of the adapter, stated that the important thing about this project is to be able to contribute to the teaching of science at all educational levels. “The initial idea is that the student makes his own sample and can photograph microscopic images, because being able to do your own preparation in situ is very beneficial for learning science,” he said.
The Rector of the ULS indicated that this is a very important project that will bring the study of science closer to children and young people in a didactic way. "Our task as a state university in the region is to help convey the image that science can be taught in a didactic way through the significant learning that is obtained from experimentation and real contact with the object to be studied," stated the highest university authority, who valued the work carried out by the Micro-Hoek team.