Pune professors become part of a space camp

They did the moonwalk, the space walk, repaired a space ship, grew vegetables in 'space' and came closest to feeling like Sunita Williams! Two teachers from Pune were part of a three member delegation to a space camp the U.S. Space & Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.

Three teachers from India were selected to attend Honeywell Educators @ Space Academy out of which there were two middle school teachers from city based Abhinav Vidyalaya High School Mayuri Deshpande and Ashwini Patil. "We were divided into groups of 15 and each day made to do either a space science activity or a math and science activity. Experiencing zero gravity conditions was amazing," said Deshpande for whom the highlight of the trip was sitting in a rocket capsule.

Conditions similar to Mars and Moon were artificially created in USSRC where teachers got the opportunity to do activities like High performance jet simulation, where they were suspended from a height of 20ft, land and water survival activity and experience difficulties faced by astronauts in real situations.

Ashwini Patil shared how they will share their experience with students and make them more interactive and interested and explain science and math concepts in a better way. Their students were extremely curious to know what their teachers had learnt. "We taught them how to measure distances of planets from the Sun with the help of a ribbon. Not only this method taught them the distances, but also the order of planets rotating around the sun," said Patil.