Interactive Virtual School Visits 2021 

The Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated the use of ITCs in most aspects of life, including education. For previous EU grants, we organised multiple “on-site” outreach talks and hands-on experiments, to raise awareness and STEM interests in younger kids, achieving always very good engagement and feedback. Pandemics restrictions made any “in-person school” event implausible, leaving videoconferences as the only viable option. However, universal fatigue against online activities, prompted us to innovate and reorganise our event as interactive lab visits.

In June 2021, 6 CRYSTAL³ scientists across Europe gave live, lay science talks, combined with pre-recorded videos showing their labs and experiments. Contents were adapted for 9-12 years old children in 11 classrooms (275 children) from 4 different schools in Spain and Germany. English was the lingua franca used. To enhance engagement, children were challenged with surprise questions throughout the activity via the game/learning platform “kahoot”. Open floor Q&A time was allocated at the event’s end, with a multitude of questions from the children for the researchers. 

The feedback we received (oral, emails, teacher surveys, children’s drawings/creations) goes far beyond our expectations. Enjoy some examples in the second video below.