OVERWIEW

INTRODUCTION

Our home, our school, the restaurant we go to with our relatives or the shop where we do our shopping are located on streets with the names of scientists, engineers, technologists or inventors of whom we do not know their contribution to science and technology… or we do not even know that they are.

This is a project developed by 4º ESO students (15 years old) in the subject of general sciences (called Ciencias Aplicadas a la Actividad Profesional)

WHY THIS NAME?

The name of our project CCC: CODEMA Callejea conConsciencia is a Spanish play on words. The translation will be: CODEMA (that is our school name) wanders the streets with consciousness.

In English, the title could be SSR (Scientists Street Raiders)

FINAL PRODUCT

MY MAP

GOALS AND JUSTIFICATION

The goals are:

• Emphasise the importance of STEM in a real life situation
• Discover the names of some streets of our city
• Be aware that most of names of streets come from important people
• Discover and locate the streets of scientists, not only in our city but also in others
• Investigate and summarise the life and main work or inventions of these scientists
• Include the information in a digital map.
• Organise information in a spreadsheet
• Motivate students to improve STEM knowledge through real life situations and using digital tools.

WHY THIS PROJECT? JUSTIFICATION

In October, at school, we celebrated the hour of code https://hourofcode.com/la/learn

Most of students got crazy using Minecraft! For this reason, I tried to design some activity for my lessons using this game. I surfed on the Internet and I also looked for inspiration in STEM ALLIANCE repository. I was interested in doing something like Minecraft education – Lesson plan – City Planning for Population Growth http://www.stemalliance.eu/practices/detail?resourceId=12470

But it was difficult to find a relationship between the activity and the oficial curriculum we have to teach. So, based on this lesson plan (city planning using minecraft), this Spanish national project https://www.fecyt.es/es/noticia/fecyt-pone-en-marcha-el-proyecto-calles-de-ciencia-para-visibilizar-los-cientificos-en-los (FECYT launches the project "Streets of science" to visualize scientists in the street) and a previous publication issued by the Gijón town hall (the city where our school is located)  https://www.gijon.es/publicacions/show/3490-las-calles-de-gijon-historia-de-sus-nombres, I came up with a new idea, designing a new activity, focused on getting know our city deeper.

During the activity (it took serveral periods of class) we celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11th February) so I modified the instructions and the initial idea and we invest 2 periods of class to investigate about streets with women scientists names. In the map is visible than the icon for men is blue and the icon for women green.

Our project inspirations

hour of code

STEM Alliance repository. Minicraft

National project

International Day of Women in Science. Screenshot taken from the official website

THE PROJECT. INSTRUCTIONS AND RESOURCES

How students developed the Project? Following teacher instructions.

Translation:

1. Search a scientific street in Gijón (recommendations: visit the town hall website, go to the tourist office, go to the industrial area* where most of scientific streets are). BONUS POINTS

2. Investigate and summarise: year of birth, year of death, main work developed, small description with relevant information about the scientist. 

3. Investigate  if there is another city in Spain or in other countries with the same street name. 

4. Photos. If it is taken from the Internet (copy URL), indicate the source (be carefull with COPYRIGHT!). You can add your own photo** (quote author) BONUS POINTS

5. INCLUDE IT IN OUR MAP . See post

For most of students, it was their first time using my maps. That is the reason why I created a tutorial to help them to use this tool. See post

INDUSTRIAL AREA

*As said before, the student gets bonus points if part of the investigation is done in field (the student goes to the tourist office to ask or go to the street and take a picture of the panel. In Gijón, most of the streets with scientists name are located in a industrial area. To help students, I took a picture of the industrial area map. This info was available for them.

Map of the industrial area in Gijón (pic: Laura, teacher)

** Some students went to the industrial area and took photos of the pannel. Those photos where included in the map!

STUDENTS' PICS

Scientist streets pics, by lfaprofe

Student: Sara Fernández

FEMALE SCIENTISTS

A collegui, used the info below to celebrated how important women in science is. This file was available for my students to research about these women and to discover where in the world there is a street with her name. 

Click here to dowload the file. 

OUR MAP

 

ICONS TO INCLUDE STREETS IN THE MAP

I designed these icons, wiht the logo of our school and the letters that represent the name of the project

Icon por men

Icon for women

For most of students, it was their first time using my maps. That is the reason why I created a tutorial to help them to use this tool. See post

MY MAPS TUTORIAL

For most of students, it was their first time using my maps. That is the reason why I created a tutorial to help them to use this tool. 

Click here to download the file. 

OUR DATABASE

 SARA'S FERNANDEZ INFORMATION (student)
Scientist streets pics, by lfaprofe


CLICK HERE

 

FEEDBACK

Students' feedback.

Tool used: https://www.mentimeter.com

Mentimeter is an interactive tool to carry out surveys and view the results in real-time. This is a powerful and innovative way of doing group reflections.