LEARNING BY TEACHING... CHILDREN – AN EXPERIENCE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

ISEP is an Engineering Higher Education School, in Oporto, Portugal. Bologna is for us a challenge, especially in teaching student’s soft skills and the ability to transfer information and knowledge to the general public. Using Ldl (Learning by teaching) with small children is a way to improve our students abilities in communication but also in designing and conceiving experiments and didactical resources in science education. Students with ages from eighteen to twenty learn fluid mechanics and experimental methods and instrumentation, teaching young children with ages from six to ten. The subjects are water, air and its properties, buoyancy, temperature, pressure, etc. In one of the first year disciplines, the students are monitors in +LAB, a laboratory that was created to promote science education in the first grades. There are several exhibitions and activities during the year; the schools register and come spend a morning or an afternoon with us. Alternatively, we can go to the schools and do some activities there, in special occasions. There are no costs to the schools when they come to visit us, thanks to the funding of Ciência Viva, a governmental agency, and also of some private funding from Habiserve, SGPS.