In September, the Millennium Institute of Oceanography (IMO) won competitive funding in the 21st National Contest for Projects for the Appreciation and Dissemination of Science, held by the Explora project of the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT). This means that IMO will be able to implement a new project called “ExploSub: Science and Technology for Submarine Exploration”, which will seek once more to familiarize the school community with science and the study of the ocean.
IMO has selected four schools, located in Coihueco (Liceo Claudio Arrau León), Penco (Escuela Eduardo Campbell), Quillón (Liceo Polivalente Luis Cruz Martínez) and San Pedro de la Paz (Colegio Galvarino), to take part in the project, which contemplates the participation of both teachers and students, aged 11-16, in the construction of a scale model of a submarine that will later be tested in water with the aim of contributing to solving the problems related to the study of the deep sea.
This ambitious cross-cutting project, in which the IMO Outreach and Development and Technology Transfer teams are taking part, represents a great challenge that needs to be faced with extreme care and attention in light of its complexity. This is why on November 21 the first project meeting took place between IMO representatives and the coordinators of the chosen schools. They started to draw up the guidelines of the program, which involves a series of monthly workshops led by specialists in different scientific fields such as engineering, biology, oceanography and computer science, who will guide students and teachers in the design of the submarine and its later construction.
The team behind ExploSub is currently preparing for the first pilot workshop to take place on January 2018, when the twelve specialists previously chosen to monitor the execution of the project, officially to start in March, will be present.
Finally, it is important to highlight that this project not only aims at encouraging and facilitating scientific learning processes among students but also at supporting educators by providing them with new and useful tools –both theoretical and practical- that they can bring to the classroom.
