UNN kicks off Science Fair with 18-member UNESCO team

UNESCO execs Ms Rovani Sigamoney, imteyay Khodabuz and Mark West with UNN VC Prof Bartho Okolo, 2nd left, at commencement of UNESCO Science Fair June 17 at Nsukka

An 18 man UNESCO team arrived the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Monday, to facilitate science and technology workshop and exposition designed to provide scientific Mobile Learning for academic staff, train students of engineering on Engineering without borders Outreach Programme, and train Secondary school students on how to use kits for practical experiments.

The event, which is the first of its kind in Africa, was made possible under the collaboration of the University of Nigeria and UNESCO.

At the opening ceremony of the workshop, at Princess Alexandra Auditorium, UNN, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Prof. Bartho Okolo explained that the multi activity workshop was designed to provide mobile learning training workshop aimed at providing academic staff with the skills in using mobile devices to create scientific contents and deliver instruction.

The workshop, according to him will also provide training for over 85 secondary school science teachers and more than 1600 secondary school students on Global water and Micro science Demonstration experiment. He said the workshop would offer secondary school students the opportunity to conduct practical works in physics, chemistry and biology, using compact and affordable kits that have guiding instructions.

Similarly Prof Okolo said that the third aim of the science fair was to provide training for University students, in the field of engineering and physical sciences, to learn about global shelter management, transportation infrastructure and micro hydro development.

Further, the Vice-Chancellor noted that“this event is taking place in our campus not only because of our pre-eminent status in Nigeria and Africa, but also because of the special relationship between our university and UNESCO, as the host of UNESCO category II Institute”.

He thanked the Director General of UNESCO, Ambassador Irina Bokova and the Directorate Staff of the International Basic Science Programme for enabling the UNN-UNESCO collaboration, and expressed hope that the Science Fair would further enhance the relationship.

In her remarks, the Assistant Director General (Science) of UNESCO, Gretchen Kalonji said that the event was in line with UNESCO initiative of advancing science education in the world and Africa in particular.

Kalonji, whose speech was mediated through Video conferencing, said that UNESCO had aggregated industries, engineers and professionals across the world to work together for the success of the workshop.

Explaining Further, one of the UNESCO delegates, Imteyaz Khodabuz, said UNESCO initiatedthe workshop to address problems in science education such as Steady decline of enrolment of young people in the sciences, low participation of girls and women in science,and poor methodologies used for teaching science subjects which often resulted in loss of interest in sciences in students’ early development.

He said some of the measures adopted by UNESCO were to introduce innovative, interesting and dynamic tools and methodologies in science teaching, in order to capture the interest of young students, and the training and retraining of science teachers to bring themup to speed with modern scientific trends.

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