Eureka! Film Competition is Being Relaunched as Learning by Doing!

The Covid-19 crisis has deeply disrupted all our educational institutions and has forced to think more deeply about how we teach and educate young people. The resultant abrupt shift in the delivery of knowledge from in-person interactive classes to online modalities has radically transformed how we interact, teach and learn. While most school systems remain closed, many, in particular those with the appropriate technological infrastructure and resources have successfully transitioned to electronic classrooms for high-schoolers. However, the younger cohort of kids in middle and elementary school remain under-served. As outlined in a Op-Ed column written by Professor Priya Natarajan in 2012, most American children tend not have exposure to apply and connect what they are learning in the classroom to the world around them. We need to provide engaging learning environments that link school curricula to the real world. This is particularly urgent now, during the pandemic when children no longer even have the stimulation offered by formal instruction in the classroom. Continuing and augmenting in-class learning, and feeding their intellectual curiosity with simple experiments that can be done around the home without expensive equipment is the goal of this project. Our hope is to offer some exciting and engaging guided explorations that will help students understand that science comprises not of abstract concepts but offers tools that we can use to understand the world.