The story behind the Science

The pandemic and post-pandemic effects of Covid-19 have increased the already enormous gap inequitable access to the right to education for nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries on all continents.  This crisis has reduced the opportunities for many children and young people, especially in rural areas and/or areas with low connectivity, to continue learning. In parallel, there are fears of a significant setback and difficulty in meeting the National Government's goals of reaching the 2.7% dropout rate by 2022, an indicator that was counted on to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to inclusive, equitable and quality education. 
In the Colombian Caribbean, moreover, it is well known that many children are unwilling or unable to return to school.  But in other cases, they feel demotivated and have lost the desire to learn. 

We are interested in motivating children to return to their learning processes, and we want to show them examples of scientists who have also gone through personal and historical moments that have often made them question whether continuing to study is the right way to go.  These role models will be used as a reference to inspire and motivate the children and make them reflect on the difficulties, and the need we humans have to overcome them and continue being better people.  Our proposal seeks to propose an alternative model in the teaching-learning process in Natural Sciences focused on high school students (8th and 9th grades), we use digital content as articulating strategies.  

The contents are developed by medical students, who have also faced challenges in their learning process, and perhaps seeing young people explaining natural science concepts, or presenting the story of people who have contributed greatly to science can generate an empowering effect on children and encourage them to continue studying.   This project seeks to connect high school students with university students through the digital platform.
Our blogs will be presented by concept to be developed, podcasts and video animations will be included with explanatory content about some concepts in Natural Sciences approached from the personal stories of the scientists who generated them.   This content will be posted in Spanish because the website is for Colombian children.
 We also propose the development of guidelines for teachers on the use of digital content, including its interconnection with the Natural Science standards for 8th and 9th grades.  Our project focuses on public school teachers, where desertion has been increasingly associated with the pandemic effects. 

The story behind the Science is focused in this first stage on children in grades 8 and 9 of high school in the Colombian Caribbean.  However, the content is on the Internet, which makes this information open to everyone.  Our interest is especially focused on this population because due to their age, they are vulnerable to dropping out of school for different reasons, and not continuing with their learning processes.  Therefore, we seek to generate a link between university students and high school students so that children between the ages of 14-16 years old, want to continue studying and can see in the example of their university classmates, that education is a possible way.  We also want to highlight with examples of great scientists that life is not easy for many people, even for these people that we always see so perfect.  And these examples are the most inspiring.  This proposal is focused on showing natural and basic sciences as tools for change in the school.   Our vision is to expand in the future so that these virtual contents can reach more people. 

I have led several pedagogical innovations associated with meaningful learning to enhance critical thinking skills in students.  I have won 3 classroom innovation awards, published scientific articles in this field, as well as participated in research books on the subject.

I have approached the population of interest in the project through the Colombian Network of Women Scientists where I have participated in a group of mentors to inspire girls in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).  I also participate in the leading group of the teacher's Saturday program of the Universidad del Norte, where learning communities are promoted and the aim is to qualify the teaching practice of teachers in the Colombian Caribbean, especially in the municipality of Atlántico.  Most of the participating teachers come from public schools in the region. Also through this program, school children are invited to do laboratory practices on the university campus to promote experiential learning in these populations.  Usually, it is high school students who participate in these activities.

We strongly believe in networking, so one of our objectives is connecting to other possibles partners, colleagues, and learning communities with the same interests. In addition, we will like to have access to mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks. So we can improve the way we created the content for the virtual classroom. 

In the same way, we are interested in receiving the monitoring and evaluation support to build an impact measurement practice. As well as the access to relevant in-kind resources such as software licenses and legal services from Solve Member and partner organizations. 

We are building a workspace on the Internet that can grow on different topics. For now, the main topic is Natural Sciences, but later we hope, we can host other fields such as Mathematics, data science, physics, and why not, astrobiology, quantum mechanics, biotechnology, etc. We would like to provide a technology-driven solution for the teacher and the student through different perspectives of Science. We don't just want to connect students with technology; we seek to connect high school students with college students. We also hope that the virtual spaces become a real space in which our university students can support small projects in schools with their knowledge, creating a high school- college students learning community.

This project is innovative because it seeks to make children believe that dreaming is possible and that education is a way to walk toward those dreams. The content of the blog will be updated according to the needs that are observed, and this makes it a flexible strategy that can respond to new conceptual needs. 
We also seek that at some point, the teachers themselves can link their technological activities with the platform and grows as a network of cooperation between teachers from different institutions can be strengthened.  
This platform lets teachers share teaching material, learning experiences in Natural Sciences, and other resources to supplement the curricular content.

Our solutions objectives for the next 12 months 

Over the next 12 months:
i) Grow to impact: At least 10 schools in the city where the platform is actively used.  This will allow us to make it more robust, and improve the quality of the website and meet specific user needs. 

In the next 5 years: 

ii) Establish contacts with the mystery of education to link our platform with national schools and strengthen the virtual school network.  The content of the website should be larger and include more science topics.  This will be updated as users show us new needs.

iii) We hope that in 5 years at least 500 teachers will have posted their learning material and their experience in teaching and learning natural sciences on the website.  

iv) We hope to create regional networks of cooperation among teachers to strengthen the use of the website.

v) We will establish quantifiable methods to evaluate the impact of the website in terms of content and its effect on high school students.

Number of girls and boys who participate in the initiative

Number of sub-blogs created from the main blog
List Natural Science concepts include in the site per ODS related (for instance, ODS 3: good health and well-being; ODS 5: Gender equality)
Features of the demographic students

The results can be classified in:

i) In the short term
The total of students participating
Number of schools participating
Number of the teacher using the website
Kind of natural science concepts
Number of visits to the website
Features of the demographic students 

ii) In the middle term results
Evolution of the website according to the users
List Natural Science concepts include in the site per ODS related (for instance, ODS 3: good health and well-being; ODS 5: Gender equality)
Number of teaching-learning practices shared through the website
Number of teachers-net by region
Number of 

iii) For the long-term results
The percentage of website usage coverage
The number of good teaching-learning practices derived from the website content.
Number of projects on meaningful learning derived from the cooperation between teachers arising from the network associated with the website
The number of students who drop out of schools where the site is used.
How the project can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs where applicable.

The technology includes the use of existing platforms, use of programs for making videos, animations, online forum spaces, visits to schools for training on how to use the platform.

Development of digital work guides for teachers.

The team always considers involving the culture and social skills of the integrands. This team has 3 women and 3 men, which means that equality of gender is a priority.  Our team is not engaged in or associated ourselves with discrimination against in any term or condition because of gender, race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, sex, or sexual orientation.

1.     Looking for external funding in other national and international organization

2.     Writing proposals to a government institution

3.     Asking for internal funds from the university

Funding so far has come from internal University funds.