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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A UNAWE project @ HFC, Dehiwala : Featured with IYA2009 & Observation Astronomy

A UNAWE Project for Girl Guides : A Session with Celestial Stuff



In fact I think that I should have blogged this earlier. However now the story has already hit the UNAWE site, thanks to Dr. Carolina Ödman, the Single Point of Contact of UNAWE. This has already fallen as an IYA event into IYA 2009 projects of Sri Lanka.
A UNAWE Project for Girl Guides : A Session with Celestial Stuff
This project was organized in last August, by the Girl Guides of Holy Family Convent Dehivala, Sri Lanka. There was a participation of over 50+ students for the event, which is also tagged as the very first program of UNAWE in Sri Lanka. The students who were from Grades 6 to 9 got a chance to have a scope on looking at heavens. In addition to students, there were teachers among those who took part to the wonderful evening that was more focused to celestial stuff rather than the old syllabi of school, and text books.

My colleague Thilina Heenatigala who is also the IYA2009 Sri Lanka National Node Secretary, gave an introduction to Observation Astronomy as initial outset of the program. Afterward Dimuth Waliwitiya, who also happens to be a colleague of mine, gave an overview on how to use star maps in dealing with the starry nights. It was very educative for students to improve their knowledge on how to recognize a patter of a constellation and then make out what the constellation really is. Then came the practical observation session, where the duo divided the students into 2 groups and conducted group sessions to further boost the understanding of heavens. Hopefully this ended up in allowing the students, themselves to determine the constellation prior to looking at and verifying the starts, and constellations, all of which proved to be successful. The evening session concluded merrily with the dinner leaving with everyone, a delightful evening with stars in their mind.

So that's the old story I missed to blog. You can also refer to Carolina's article here @ UNAWE site.
http://www.unawe.org/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=453:unawe-in-sri-lanka&catid=226:sri-lanka&Itemid=190

Here are some random images depicting how the event went.

A UNAWE Project for Girl Guides : A Session with Celestial StuffDimuth among students @ star map session
A UNAWE Project for Girl Guides : A Session with Celestial Stuff
Thilina @ the lecture sessionA UNAWE Project for Girl Guides : A Session with Celestial Stuff
Students, stargazing !!

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