SkyLight – a Global Science Opera
During 2015, hundreds of students from schools in up to 30 countries within the Galileo Teacher Training Program, the Global Hands on Universe [GHOU] and leading cultural institutions will collaborate to create and simultaneously perform a Science Opera inspired by Cosmic Light together with the support of real-time technological collaboration. This will provide a platform for both creative science learning as well as cross-border friendship and cooperation.
«SkyLight – a Global Science Opera» will be the first science opera in history to be written together by a global community of children, teachers, scientists and artists. «SkyLight» has been endorsed by the International Astronomical Union as an official project of UNESCO’s International Year of Light 2015. «SkyLight – a Global Science Opera» is part of the Write a Science Opera (WASO) initiative and the EU Comenius Project “Implementing Creative Strategies into Science Teaching (CREAT-IT)”, in collaboration with additional projects which focus on creative learning.
The visual scenery of SkyLight will include real-time interactive participation of a global audience (participating through the Opus Lux).
Award-winning space and nature photographer Babak Tafreshi has provided images for the SkyLight performance and promotional material.
The performance of «SkyLight» on October 3rd, 2015, will coincide with the CREAT-IT project’s conference in Athens, Greece, and once more in October, during World Space Week, in collaboration with Lunar Mission One.
«In a time when our world governments seem to be not acting very carefully or rationally, it is so important for projects like Skylight to come to fruition! To me, «SkyLight», if I might take a verbal liberty here, is a fantastic example of «Crowd-Sourced World Peace and Cooperation». That is, you have discovered a way of using the Internet for all people on our planet to work together to inspire, educate, and lift us all above our self-imposed limits and oppression by others. Certainly one of the spiritual foundations of Global Hands On Universe and the Galileo Teacher Training Program is that all Earthlings learn to work together to study the stars». – Professor Carl Pennypacker (University of California, Berkeley), Principal Investigator of Global Hands on Universe.
Countries currently involved in «SkyLight» are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Morocco, Nepal, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Principe, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Spain, S.Tome, Srilanka, Turkey, UK, USA, Zambia.
Introducing the Creative Science Classroom
The SkyLight Science Opera and the International Year of Light 2015 will be a main theme of the Creative Science Classroom Summer School in Greece. From 12 to 17 July 2015, in Athens, Greece, the CREAT-IT project consortium is organizing a Summer School that aims to be a meeting point for science educators, scientists, artists, art educators, and policy-makers wishing to learn creative strategies in today’s science teaching.
Summer School participants will experience three distinct but inter-related Case Studies, which together provide a broad overview of the promising possibilities in the field of creative science teaching. The Case Studies, Science Theatre (ST), Write a Science Opera (WASO) and Junior Science Café (JSC), will be experienced through hands-on and on-stage work. In addition, in-depth analysis of creativity in science education will take place, as well as the creation of new, original scenarios as part of a growing online network.
For more information, follow the SkyLight Facebook group or contact Oded Ben-Horin, Associate Professor, Stord Haugesund University College, Norway, Faculty of Learning and Culture (oded [dot] ben [at] hsh [dot] no).
