Overview of the project

Project title: E-Teacher Training: Taking astronomy to the Portuguese Speaking Countries community
Project leader: Dr. Lina Canas

Supporting the philosophy of Galileo Teacher Training Program (http://www.galileoteachers.org/) an active and expanding legacy of the International Year of Astronomy and a program endorsed by IAU and UNESCO, the project “E-Teacher Training: Taking astronomy to the Portuguese Speaking Countries community” plans to train teacher trainers, the Galileo Ambassadors, through online teacher training workshops in the effective use of free astronomy tools, resources and in class activities, adapted to science curricula of countries in which Portuguese is the official language or has a strong social and cultural importance.

The key framework of “E-Teacher Training: Taking astronomy to the Portuguese Speaking Countries community” is sustainability: by training teacher trainers, the program will adapt and deliver astronomy educational resources, orienting the training for its use, for an ultimate and effective delivery in classroom. By the end of the project all trainers attending the program are equipped to train other teachers in these methodologies, leveraging the work begun in the virtual workshops, continuing the legacy of this project in future: the future continuous training of other teachers on site by the new teachers trained in the program.

Through astronomy exercises and cross-disciplinary resources the workshop delivered contents are already certified by other teaching communities around the world and this program will adapt them to each country specific science curricula and reach locations scarce in resources of their own, allowing them to have access to training that otherwise couldn’t have. We will use the open course methodology and through already established partnerships have cutting edge resources for this purpose all for free. All sessions will be recorded and available for future use. With this project we hope to be taking steps in solving the fast growth of digital divide, empowering teachers on the use of user friendly tools as a first step.