In the beginning of May this year, the ESA invited educators to apply for a place on the Human Spaceflight (HSF) teachers’ workshop at the Erasmus Building in the ESA/ESTEC technology centre in Noordwijk (The Netherlands). As one of two German participants I was chosen to take part in this event at the start of Lower Saxony’s school holidays. The other 38 participants were selected from the remaining 17 European countries that support the ESA human spaceflight activities.

Test, design and develop education material

The ESA used this event to engage us in a dialogue to become more involved with the design and development of educational materials that will continue to inspire pupils on space themes. The programme allowed us to learn a lot about the education materials that have already been developed by the education team of the HSF didactics office. These include activities such as “Take your Classroom into Space”, the video “Nutrition on Earth and in Space”, and the educational game “Space flight challenger”. We were also guided through brainstorming sessions and a discussion with guest speakers about the use of space topics in classroom activities. Other workshops on mars exploration, radio contacts, human spaceflight in the movies and the PlayDecide game were facilitated by science communicators, experts and a participant.

Meet an astronaut

The Belgian ESA astronaut Frank De Winne gave us a lecture about the highlights of his space mission. He did many educational activities during his long duration mission aboard the International Space Station and provided a number of ideas for similar future projects. The programme was complimented by tours to the ESTEC High Bay exhibition and the test facilities, e.g. to an orbiter shaking test equipment.

European contacts

These were three very interesting days of listening, learning, brainstorming and networking with all the different colleagues, speakers and organisers in the English language. The programme was concluded by an interactive dinner at Space Expo and a relaxed evening on the Dutch beach. There was plenty of opportunity for us to share ideas with our colleagues and the ESA organisers. The general feeling during the workshop was that it was busy, filled with knowledge and memorable experiences, in a truly European context.

Space experiments with NGO?

The educational aspect of the next long duration flight on the ISS by a European astronaut, Paolo Nespoli’s mission that starts in December, will be even more important and will benefit from ideas developed during the workshop. Together with a Dutch-English colleague I offered the suggestion to carry out the Paolo Nespoli’s ISS greenhouse experiment in parallel with pupils at the Klimahaus Bremerhaven. This would offer the NGO group the opportunity to be involved in space activities via video conference in the beginning of 2011. (07.08.2010)

• ESA´s report about the HSF teachers´ workshop 
• Life in Space - ESA´s art competition for pupils up to 14 years
• Train like an astronaut - ESA´s fitness competition for pupils up to 12 years
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