In Peques and Más we bring an interview with José María Muñoz Vidal of the I.E.S. Santa Rosa de Lima in Córdoba and responsible for the Limasat Project. What started at the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year as the challenge of a technology teacher to his students to see how it could be verified that the Earth is round ended on May 12, 2012 with the launch of Limasat. Limasat are a group of ESO students interested in science and technology and their goal is to build a probe with which to measure temperatures beyond the troposphere and take pictures of the earth from the stratosphere. Limasat has a blog full of details of the project with enumeration of successes and especially with the lessons learned throughout the mission. The interview with José María focuses more on the emotional aspects of all the work done with the students, so we thank him for his collaboration and the facilities he has given us to complete the interview.
What were the challenges of the project?
The initial challenge was to show that the earth is round, obtaining images of the earth's curvature. Since I saw, about five years ago, images of the earth obtained through cameras in balloons, I was clear that I wanted to take such a photograph. At that time I was not yet teaching and as soon as I was able to become a teacher I already raised to my first students the complications of such a demonstration. Last year, by presenting the project in the second edition of the Knowledge Deepening Program, Deepen, we obtained the necessary financing to turn the idea into reality.
The first day girls and boys arrived from different centers theoretically "wanting to learn more and / or in a different way than usual in the classroom." They barely knew anything about the project that had corresponded to them and when I asked them why they were there on a Friday afternoon, with the fatigue of the whole week and being able to be doing many other things, they all responded very sincerely more or less the same: "Because my parents have pointed me out". I explained to them what the project was going to be and told them that I did not want to work with anyone who did not want to be there, that the change could be processed to a different project and that there were people who had stayed at the doors that could fill the positions that they leave vacancies.
At the end of the first session, after the presentation of objectives and having seen images of previous similar projects, I asked them if they wanted to come to the second session personally and voluntarily and, although many believed that the project was crazy impossible to achieve , everyone said yes.
The program consisted of 12 sessions on alternate Fridays from 17 to 20 hours from December to June. Around 180 projects in different fields (science, mathematics, chemistry, robotics, astronomy, etc.) all of the scientific and technological field were developed throughout Andalusia.
How you managed the collaboration of all students
In general, the interest in student science and the attractiveness of the project meant that as soon as the objectives of the session were explained, there were always volunteers for the different tasks to be carried out: search for information, make price comparisons, manage purchases, make phone calls, study airway maps, test the components, prepare the inside of the probe, etc. It is also true that there was some defection and some component of the team decided not to continue until the end.
How you worked motivation among students
I don't know very well how to answer this question. Perhaps making them feel that they worked in a space agency because the project has its parallels with the space missions, conveying my illusion and letting them know that we could be the first Andalusian institute to do something like this, letting them see part of the transcendence of what they were developing ( they invited us to the Science Fair, in Seville, and we went to exhibit there, a team from “The Club of Ideas” came to record a report about our project)
There were always tasks for everyone, everyone added up and when they got tired we made some rest to snack and sometimes we even played mini basketball games between us.
In the previous days and the launch day it was already easier and the motivation arose spontaneously because many of the efforts developed during the previous months were concentrated there. The applause that was generated when we met to see the images captured by the probe made us live a moment of intense pride. We had succeeded.
What sources of information have you used
We have read and consulted the reports and blogs of similar projects that have preceded us as Meteotek'08 of the IES Bisbal de Gerona in 2008 and especially Chasat of the Colegio Mayor Chaminade in Madrid in 2010. We also had the collaboration of the Daedalus group that clarified us via email all the questions that arose.
What tools have you used in the project?
Most sessions took place in a classroom with digital whiteboard. Others in the Technology Workshop of the center and some tests, such as the parachute, were performed in the yard or even outside. We work with computers with the Guadalinex operating system. We have an Internet connection to make price comparisons of the components that we later purchase. We use the phone to manage permissions. We communicate with each other through email.
What tasks had to be done at home
Tasks were offered voluntarily such as reading more about the subject, advancing in the preparation of the logo, etc. In the blog we collected what we did in each session as a logbook. Since there were 12 students and 12 sessions, each one was in charge of writing what had been done in one of them. If he did not have time to do so at the end of the session, he tried to complete at home.
How tasks were distributed
The days in which the distribution of tasks had to be advanced on many fronts was among what the teacher considered appropriate according to age and / or capacity and especially according to the students' desire, that is, voluntary (“who wants to do this? "). What was mandatory was the exposure to other colleagues, as complete and detailed as possible, of what they had been working on.
What is the future of the initiative?
The future of our “space agency” is beginning to be present and the 4th Technology group of Santa Rosa de Lima is already working on the Limasat II mission. The future of the program, at least in our community, is already a reality called "Andalusia Profundiza". From there the Limasat III mission will be developed.
The objective of these missions is twofold, on the one hand to repeat what was done well in mission I and look for some new challenge by improving what was not done well and on the other hand to disseminate what is done today in an institute Cordoba public. It is about supporting the country's technological education, seriously threatened by the LOMCE draft, the new educational law that the nation's government intends to approve.
And it is that the LOMCE greatly decreases its number of hours with respect to the current LOE, instead of increasing it. The countries with the best results in the PISA tests exceed 300 hours of technological education between primary and secondary schools and we now, before going down, have about 141 hours. We are in the 21st century and in my modest opinion the students cannot be exclusively consumers of a technology that does not know how it works, it must be "maker" of it.
I want to take this opportunity to leave more information on technological education obtained on the page of the State Platform of Technology Teachers and on that of the Association of Technology Teachers of Andalusia. I also include the link to the technology education support page.
Comment on a lesson learned in the Limasat project
There were many fun moments, for example, in the recordings for Canal Sur, a shot did not come out because the one who had to talk forgot the second paragraph of his text, so it had to be repeated a lot of times. Many times you learn from mistakes and we made many, the most important are collected in session 12 of the blog. We tested the thermometer too late and discovered only two days before launching that the chosen thermometer did not record the temperatures with the desired frequency. When entering the position coordinates of the probe after landing we were wrong in a figure and therefore we were looking for the probe under horrible heat for several hours in a place that was not where the probe rested.
I will not tire of repeating that the most important thing we learned was the lesson that tells us that although the goals seem very high (ours at 30,000 meters above sea level) with shared effort and enthusiasm can be achieved.
And so far the interview with José María, we thank you very much for your time to explain your project, your support for technological education, your dedication and love for science and your effort to claim the continuity of programs such as the Deepen defending directly or indirectly the public school.
I remember that the Limasat blog explains, quite correctly, the steps to make a project like this. The Limasat team was made up of 11 students from seven different centers in the capital city of Córdoba and it was possible thanks to the financing of the Profundiza knowledge expansion program.
This is the video that we could see in Microsiervos and that shows the success achieved with the Limasat probe by the students and their teacher.
