Researchers from Trinity’s AMBER centre have helped launch an online learning service – featuring videos and experiments – for primary school students learning science at home as a result of the coronavirus.
The programme, created along with researchers from St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, launches today and hopes to get five educational videos online over the next three weeks. It’s aimed at children between the ages of 10 and 12.
It’s an adaptation of AMBER’s “Nanowow” programme, and accompanies videos with notes and presentations that teachers and parents can use to guide their children’s learning.
Topics range from “Can we grow human brains?” to “What is a mirror made from?”.
Lorraine Byrne, the executive director of the AMBER Research Centre, said in a press statement that parents across the world “are adjusting to a new normal”.
“The measures put place to protect us from the spread of COVID-19 have meant the closure of schools and families socially distancing themselves from others”, she said, adding: “At AMBER we have a wealth of educational resources available to help with science learning. Ordinarily these resources would be delivered by teachers in a classroom setting but in the current landscape we wanted to find a way to bring these to life for children in their homes.”
The AMBER centre will also be hosting a number of virtual science events on its ScienceLive initiative in the coming months.
Trinity researchers have made a number of breakthroughs related to the coronavirus and its effects.
In the Department of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, academics have launched a study aiming to examine the impact that widespread use of platforms such as Zoom, FaceTime and Microsoft Teams has on our voices.
The research team created a survey to investigate the potential effects of new forms of remote communication, the use of which has increased considerably since many people started working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic
