Author: Amirul Hazim Kamarulzaman
Affiliation: Universe Awareness Malaysia (Apadilangit)
Country: Malaysia
Co-Author: Hafez Murtza (Project Owner of IMPACT Dome, IAU OAD funded proposal)
Affiliation: Universe Awareness Malaysia (Apadilangit)
Country: Malaysia
Title: Communicating Astronomy to inclusive kids using IMPACT Dome: Indonesia Malaysia Project on Astronomy Education using Tactile Image (IMPACT Dome).
The world of astronomy is a never-ending ground-breaking discovery that unfolds the mystery of the universe. In early education of youngsters, these discoveries help them to gain interest and curiosity. It is important for Education Public Outreach (EPO) group to take advantage to spread the exposure on astronomy to the public. Besides that, creating such motivation to astronomy through education will help public to love and learn science specifically in astronomy.
In Malaysia, public outreach in astronomy is mushrooming. Numbers of societies and observatories in all state promote astronomy and space science to the masses. Despite of that, inclusive people are almost be forgotten due to lack of communication channels to expose and teach them. Building a tool to communicate with inclusive kids is part of teaching process that helps educators to reach them. IMPACT Dome is physical teaching aids with tactile images, aims to assist visually and hearing impaired kids to sense the sky above them. Therefore building solid lesson plan on how to use the dome is crucial. The effectiveness of the dome can only be seen with proper implementation of structured lesson plan purposely build for impaired kids.
Crafting module with clear objective and implementation methodology will assist educators to guide the kids exploring the universe using the Dome. Numbers of skills can be embedded in the learning process such as Collaborations, Creativity , Communication and Critical thinking. Teaching astronomy for the inclusive kids need passion and creativity. Impact dome will be provided with audio and music to enrich the learning experience and stimulate hearing senses of this special kids. With this module, we will be able to identify astronomy sign language code that are lacking in our language and help to come out with better codes.