Mirwat Shamshad, an educator at an all-girls high school in Islamabad, Pakistan, explains how Slooh has given her students ”a platform where they could see and explore beyond the boundaries.”
Ms. Shamshad earned a Slooh grant for her classroom and has been using Slooh for about two months. She is an educator set on “engaging my students in various projects which helps them to explore the horizons beyond their defined textbooks.” This is exactly the kind of experiential learning that Slooh enables. She explains how with Slooh she could make connections to the physics syllabus she already had laid out and easily incorporate it into her curriculum.
Ms. Shamshad’s said, "students completed Quests, set up missions, watched live sunsets, and joined other missions. A few of the students are very enthusiastic and wanted to learn and explore even more, thus, they themselves registered and joined live star parties despite the time zone difference to quench their thirst for learning.”
“Once the students had worked and made their own personalized posters with their unique observations of the celestial objects, they were encouraged to showcase the work for the whole school. To make the school audience (including students and teachers) understand their work, students prepared and delivered the presentation on a dedicated day and displayed their work.”
”Presentations encompassed information about Slooh: what online telescopes are? What are observatories? What factors to consider while scheduling a mission? Comparing the sizes of celestial objects in our solar system and beyond and much more…The day ended with wows, what, how, fascinating, amazing, is it real stuff? The display was well received by the rest of the students.”
This kind of personal exploration and community sharing is exactly the type of learning experience Slooh is designed to cultivate. It intertwines the balance of independent curiosities and group collaboration. It gives students the opportunity to learn for themselves and then teach each other.
In hindsight, Ms. Shamshad reflected that “this activity has been an enthralling experience, as it has helped enhance my student’s collaborative skills while working together on the display, communication skills while presenting and delivering the information related to their work, acquired some digital skills and top most have given them the flavor that they never had been in to. The journey has been exhilarating and profound learning for me and my students.”
Below are more pictures of Ms. Shamshad’s students as they dove into their Slooh space exploration.
