Matthew Anderson
NQT Secondary Science at Challenge College, Bradford
I was first introduced to the telescope during a workshop as part of my PGCE course. It was a fascinating afternoon that changed my opinion of what it is possible to do with astronomy in schools. The idea of teaching astronomy in such a hands-on way is something that I never would have expected from my previous experience.
I've used the telescope to help pupils who were working on a presentation about space. The site is full of interactive resources and questions that I thought my pupils would be far more likely to spend their own time looking at, than they might a static webpage and quite a few pupils ended up using images from the site in their presentations. I'm looking forward to putting a class through the system, however I like how flexible a resource it is. I've had a lot of ideas for using the site with the full range of pupils; from project work with A level students, right down to using the animations in front of my year 7 class to help them understand the cause of day and night.
It's great to see a resource where thought has gone into how it can help teachers, as much as how it helps students. As a first time teacher I found the lesson plans really helpful they're full of interesting ideas and experiments, and the visit to my college was a great springboard into the vastness of space. I had a lot of fun playing with this resource myself, taking pictures and playing about with the site. I hope my students have enjoyed the site as much as I have.
Dr. Joanne Lord
Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield
My pupils, regardless of their abilities, all enjoy doing experiments within science lessons. However, every year when it comes to teaching the space and astronomy sections of the syllabus, normally during the summer term, there are often times when whole class experiments are not done for a couple of weeks. Pupils are always keen and very interested when starting this topic and unfortunately their enthusiasm dissipates rapidly.
Using the BRT (Bradford Robotic Telescope) site during lessons allowed pupils to take their own images of the stars enabling many to really connect with the topic, some even asked to take printouts home to stick on their walls; others as they often do with experiments didn't really notice that they were learning at all. With its mixture of questions in the web pages, use of the actual telescope and access to well thought out handouts, I found the BRT always kept the students guessing at what they'd be doing next and it's this variety that is so important to keep pupils interested, engaged and learning.
Computer usage within school is something that's always enjoyed regardless
of subject, but it was nice to see that the website itself captivated the
students rather than pupils pretending to work whilst hiding other open
windows at the bottom of the screen.
Everyone within the class could navigate the website at their own pace,
so pupils remained focussed on what they were doing. It's also nice
to see that the site is trying to deal with different types of learner by
incorporating adaptive content and utilising the one to one nature of computers
very effectively.
The site could also be used on an interactive whiteboard, getting the pupils up individually to answer questions and working through the different handouts. One week when I had to put off a lesson in the computer suite (double booked), the pupils were devastated, but it's nice to have this as a fallback, and it's a means of controlling the class, as you can always remove the privilege of having everyone at their own computer.
Although it did take some time to setup the necessary user accounts I think the process was far more inspirational than working from books enabling all of the pupils to take their own images.
Talking to my Year 8 class after Christmas, I mentioned the website, the class replied that they remembered using the telescope last year with their teacher. It's good to see that the experience is still memorable long after they'd finished using it in class. Pleasingly, a large number of the students were sufficiently motivated by the site that they have continued using it in their own time. One student even received a telescope for Christmas and I'd like to think that was more than a co-incidence.
Inspirational ideas like this are something that's needed in modern teaching, if we're going to have any chance of competing with their PSP's for attention, after all even I want one of those!
