Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

The NOVA Mobile Planetarium strives to give all children in the Netherlands an unforgettable STEM experience during their school career. Since 2009, the project has inspired almost 500,000 school students across the Netherlands. The NOVA approach has real impact on its visitors as the shows are fully live and interactive. Recent collaborations with planetarium projects around the world are broadening the reach of the NOVA vision further. By any standard metric, a success story! However, self-reflection during the relative quiet of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the project does not reach all areas and all demographics in the Netherlands – the project is not yet fully inclusive. In this talk, we outline the roadmap designed to turn the NOVA Mobile Planetarium into a truly inclusive project.

About Joanna Holt

Joanna Holt is the Education Manager at the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) and a science education researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). She completed her PhD in astrophysics in 2005 at the University of Sheffield in the UK. After more than a decade in academic research, she specialised in astronomy and science education including positions in the Education Team at the European Space Agency (ESA) and at the primary teacher training institute at the AUAS. Joanna is responsible for the NOVA Mobile Planetarium and is a member of the Dutch Black Hole Consortium. Her research interests include astronomy education, smart education and how to support the teaching of scientific thinking skills.