From Space to School - Earth and Moon Observation in Immersion and Experiments

Abstract

Tosupport the primary and secondary STEM education in Germany, theEuropean Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) Germany was founded in May 2018. It was implemented by a consortium of ten institutions led by the Geomatics Research Group at the Department of Geography at the Ruhr-University Bochum, working in close collaboration with ESA Education(funding institution)and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).Institutes of the University of Bonn, Cologne and of the Ruhr-University Bochum as well as the Planetarium, the Observatory Bochum and the network “Zukunft durch Innovation”are part of the consortium. During the so-called “Phase Study 0” the German educational system was analysed and a strategy to support STEM education in Germany was workedout.In comparison to other European countries, the educational system in Germany is structured by the states and not by the federal government. Thus, each of the 16 states decides on how to structure their educational system, which leads to multiple differences and a sum of nearly 450 different curricula in the STEM subjects. A strategy wasneeded to reach teachers and pupilsin all federal states equallyand motivate pupils for STEM subject. Therefore, a quantitative curriculum analysis was conducted by mapping the state curricula across the primary and secondary school education levels. As a result, ESERO Germany will focus on the competence orientationof STEM subjectsand on the topics of the STEM curriculacombined with applied space science. This is shown in our examples, three teaching units as part of ESA’s Moon Camp Challengeand our designed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s) about Earth. These short videos combine geographic analysis and physical background information at the same time.Also,we present our Augmented Reality Application “FromtheEarth totheMoonand Back”.The paper finishes with a shortoutlook onupcoming teacher trainings, competitions and classroom resources.