More Interactive and Virtual Teaching Tools on Nuclear Now Available

Virtualizing Science Education

As part of the new online NUCLEANDO programme, virtual tours of nuclear facilities across the region have been developed, using 360-degree photos, allowing students to explore the facilities and institutions using nuclear technology to improve health, propel scientific research forward and produce low-carbon energy.

To generate further interest in nuclear science, interactive publications and posters have been developed on lesser-known, but important subjects such as radon contamination, the pulsed operation of lasers and the growing role of women in the industry, which link to dedicated webpages with more information when scanned using students’ smart phones.

“By using the infographic format, students and teachers can access information quickly. The QR codes that appear on these posters are an excellent tool that allows us to delve into data, applications and scientific concepts,” said Miranda.

Since April 2020, small eLearning modules for young students have been made available via the LANENT Virtual Campus. These include interactive presentations on nuclear-related topics, with quizzes for students to complete at the end of each module.

Custom-Made Courses

The updated NUCLEANDO platform also makes use of ‘eXe-Learning’, a web-based authoring platform designed to help teachers to create and share online teaching materials. Using this platform, educators in the region can now avoid the steep learning curve usually associated with publishing content online and can instead quickly and intuitively design their own web modules. Once assessed and cleared for publication by IAEA experts, the modules will be listed on LANENT’s Virtual Campus for use by other instructors and schoolteachers in the region. 

When IAEA and LANENT experts originally presented NUCLEANDO to secondary school teachers in Latin America, they not only integrated the programme into their curriculums, but also shared it with other educators locally. This multiplier effect has now been augmented by NUCLEANDO moving online — which allows teachers worldwide to download or prepare their own teaching modules. 

“eXe-Learning is a versatile tool for presenting new information and complementary activities to young students,” said Felipe Bravo Huerta, a teacher at the Palmarés School in Chile. “I already have ideas where this tool will be of great help and will work well with multimedia material already available through NUCLEANDO.”

Teaching Teachers

Organized in September at the request of the Government of Chile, the virtual course introduced its 51 Chilean participants to the latest digital tools and materials added to the NUCLEANDO suite, enabling the attending teachers to decide which elements to incorporate into their classrooms and which would suit their student’s needs.

Central to the event was a comprehensive exploration of the eXe-Learning platform: How can I design and publish presentations and lectures online? Which technologies would my students most eagerly respond to? When and where should I incorporate interactive elements into my curriculum?

As teachers continue to make use of these digital tools to produce and share new teaching content, NUCLEANDO is helping to foster and greatly expand awareness of nuclear science in primary and secondary schools. As new modules are developed and more teachers adopt the programme, more students can begin to understand the peaceful and beneficial applications of nuclear science.

__________

[1] RLA0057, ‘Enhancing Nuclear Education, Training, Outreach and Knowledge Management’