Bring science to children
Actua team visits Coral, Chester, Baker and Rankin
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
RANKIN INLET
A group of small robots were the focus of attention as two members of the Actua science outreach program spent the week at Leo Ussak Elementary School in Rankin Inlet this past week.
Andrew Henderson of London, Ont., said he and Brittney Meunier-Gauthier of North Bay, Ont., conducted science workshops all week at the school.
He said Actua visits the Kivalliq twice a year to conduct workshops in May and a science camp in the summer.
"Brittney and I are part of the outreach team, and we reach all the communities that don't have a member university that does Actua programming," said Henderson.
"Actua runs science programming through 33 member post-secondary institutions across Canada.
"The outreach team is a separate entity that travels to remote and rural communities to deliver the programs.
"Actua hires mainly undergraduate students, so Brittney just finished her first year at Nipissing and I'm going into my fifth year of criminology and education at Nipissing and Laurier."
Henderson said the kindergarten to Grade 2 program is based on movement and sound, while Grade 3 and Grade 4 deals with colour as an abstract concept.
He said this is his second year in the Kivalliq with Actua and, so far, he's done a delivery in every community except Naujaat.
"The kids here get so excited when we come that they're all super engaged and always willing to listen.
"Even some of the kids who normally might be a little bit disruptive in class are right in there with everyone else learning the material."
Henderson said the movement and sound program deals with a human being's five senses, and how a robot can also use senses and movement to operate.
He said they get the students to do some hands-on activities with the robots so they can learn some critical-thinking skills, do some problem solving and see why certain combinations of blocks won't make the robots work.
"With the colour workshop, we talk about how we have retinas in the back of our eyes and how colour doesn't really exist in the physical sense.
"It's just light being reflected off objects, observed by our eyes and translated to our brain.
"We relate that to a second set of robots we have that are actually able to read black, blue, green and red.
"When they're on the paper, there's a sensor underneath and when it reads certain combinations of colours, it can do certain actions such as a dance move.
"So the kids are able to design mazes using different colours and make the robots do different things."
Meunier-Gauthier is enjoying her first trip to the Kivalliq with Actua.
In fact, her travels with Actua this year took her outside of Ontario for the first time in her life.
Meunier-Gauthier said she visited four different provinces during her first four days with Actua.
She said she and Henderson made their first stop in Coral Harbour, and then visited Chesterfield Inlet, Baker Lake and Rankin.
"The kids here are so energetic and excited, and they've all been well-behaved," said Meunier-Gauthier.
"We've had every kid participate in every workshop we've done here.
"They're interested in what we're doing and they don't want us to leave.
"They keep asking us if we can come back tomorrow or, at least, very soon again."
Meunier-Gauthier said the hands-on component of their programming is a big hit with the young students.
She said there are hands-on components in every workshop that really get the kids to interact with them and each other.
"We have robots in two of our workshops and the kids absolutely love playing with them.
"The kids in the four communities we've been to here really tend to open up to us more as the week goes on.
"We went to Chester a couple of days after they had a suicide, so the community was very sad and many of the students were grieving.
"We showed up with the most positive attitudes we could possibly have and they had better school attendance while we were there, even with everything that was going on.
"I really enjoyed getting those students excited about learning, and helping them to rebound a bit."
One doesn't have to spend much time with Meunier-Gauthier before realizing she's a huge believer in Actua programming.
Although only being in her first year with Actua, she said she plans to work for Actua for years to come.
"I actually went to a meeting with the senior advisor of my company which dealt with the possibility of getting another membership for Actua.
"If it gets approved, they're looking at hiring me to be the co-ordinator for Actua's new membership university."
