Space through light, light through space

This is a blog post written by Emma Lindahl, a science teacher from Sweden, and Nino Abesadze, a physics teacher from Georgia.

We first met at the European Science on Stage festival in Portugal in 2019 where we both showed science projects for children. We liked each other's projects and exchanged contact information. But the situation changed in early 2020 due to Corona. Therefore it took nearly a year before we got in touch again. We found that we inspire each other and decided to make a project together.

At this time Nino was going to make a project with her science club about light and Emma was going to teach her class about space. All the students were 10-12 years old. The thing we both liked about our earlier projects was the models we had made. These models gave young students the possibility to learn science in a playful way. So we decided to let our students make models to explain different phenomena. When the Swedish students came across a fact about light, they built a model and explained it to the Georgian students.

The Georgian students did the same when they came across something about space. This way, the students were learning about space through light and about light through space.

Of course, the Corona pandemic has affected us all in different ways and it has probably changed how we should have otherwise planned this project. For example, the Georgian students couldn’t build their models together. They also had to use what they had at home since the shops were closed. But at the same time, this project was a big motivation for the Georgian students when they couldn’t meet. 

And instead of just us teachers visiting each other the students got more included by all the video meetings we had. We have learned a lot from this project and are planning to continue working together. We now consider ourselves to be both colleagues and friends.