Continuing cooperation with Norwegian partners in the implementation of the project “Development of the Innovation Center in Liepaja City”, employees of the Science and Education Innovation Center (ZIIC) of the Liepaja Municipal Education Department went on an experience exchange and knowledge improvement experience to the Science Farm and Science Factory in Norway from March 20 to 22.
This was the third and final visit to the cooperation partner – Jaermuseet regional museum, with the purpose to participate in classes organized and led by Norwegian cooperation partners for students on topics relevant to the Nature House and Technology Co-creation Space, with aim to participate in workshops to improve both interest education and content of non-formal education programs for teachers.
The employees who work in the ZIIC Nature House on a daily basis, together with the students of the Jæren region, participated in the two-day thematic master classes organized by the Science Farm as part of the STEM Talent Academy on the topic dedicated to chemistry. Under the guidance of the Norwegian partners, skills and practical knowledge were gained in the application of various creative methods, such as how to use well-known games such as “Bingo” and “Ship Battles” to learn about the periodic table of chemical elements and how to use simple foods and the solid form of carbon dioxide, which known as dry ice, would create fascinating experiments, thus educating about the reactions of substances and the processes of changing the aggregate states of substances. The experience gained is useful for supplementing and improving the content of the offered educational programs of interest in the Nature House.
The educational technology work specialist of the technology co-creation space had the opportunity to participate in the master classes of the technology department of the Science Factory, where students were taught such lessons as “Printing shirts” and “The art of artificial intelligence”. The shirt printing master class used a printing technique where a negative projection of the image was created using specialized ink on manholes found on the streets, which were then used as a form of paint overlay. The artificial intelligence art class implemented a visualization method using designs generated by artificial intelligence.
The opportunity to get acquainted with methodical solutions for documentation and room arrangement was valuable. Namely, in the Science Factory co-creation space (Makerspace), the documentation of one’s experience is carried out using video material, which is published on a platform freely available to the public. Lessons were learned about the layout of the premises and the logic of the instrumentation. All the obtained and documented ideas will be usefully used when setting up a technology co-creation space, which will be located at Klāva Ukstiņa street 17/23, Liepāja, which in the future is intended as a place of activity of ZIIC with specialization in educational technologies and digital production equipment.
Gaining experience and learning ended at Bogafjell school, where cooperation partners demonstrated a science show to students and held master classes in programming and car modelling. The experience gained is considered useful, as it has been seen both how programming elements are integrated into formal education in the Norwegian education system, and how cooperation with the regional science center proceeds.
The experience exchange trip is being implemented within the project “Development of the Innovation Centre in Liepaja City” that is funded by the EEA/N grant programme “Research and Education”. Its total cost is EUR 986 049.00, of which EUR 754 327.40 is co-financing of the Norwegian Financial Instrument, EUR 133 116.60 is co-financed by the State budget of Latvia and EUR 98 605.00 by Liepaja City Municipality.
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