Space And Astronomy As An Exciting Way To Teach Stem In India

Talk
Teaching astronomy as part of other subjects in secondary schools – astronomy as a “gateway science”
4th Shaw-IAU Workshop
Wednesday Nov. 16, 2022
UTC: 8:10 p.m. - 8:20 p.m. America/New_York: 3:10 p.m.- 3:20 p.m.
Thursday Nov. 17, 2022
UTC: 10:10 a.m. - 10:20 a.m. America/New_York: 5:10 a.m.- 5:20 a.m.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), is an educational concept, essential for the future. It emphasizes critical-thinking, interdisciplinary, hands-on, and real life based applications. Astronomy is a great way to teach STEM because it is the basis of all Sciences and interdisciplinary. A problem faced is that Astronomy and Space are not counted as curriculum subjects, in countries such as India. STEM & Space has designed sessions that tie in primary curriculum subjects such as physics, math, biology, geography and computing to space related hands-on activities which make it possible to interest students and also directly address curriculum topics, thus finding endorsement from schools and teachers. In this webinar, we will give examples of this correlation.

About Mila Mitra

"Dr. Mitra is the Co founder and Academic Head of an educational company, STEM & Space, based in India, who foster interest in STEM through the domain of space and Astronomy.
After completing her PhD in Astronomy from Rice University, Houston, she worked as support scientist on several satellite missions at NASA Goddard including the Cosmic Background Explorer project,
In recent years, she has been leading efforts in space based education in India. Under her initiative, innovative STEM workshops have been launched. She has coordinated Citizen science projects such as the International Asteroid Search Campaign and represented India in Astronomy Conference in Brazil and Global Hands on Universe. She contributes to space news in media."

Watch a recording of this talk (external link)