Aalto University and it's Luma Center offer activities for High School Students.
Luma Centers operate in every University in Finland. The main focus of these Centers is to offer activities to students that do not have proper facilities for these activities in their own schools and to run professional development activities for teachers. Today’s Luminaris activities for high school students included a lecture and labs.
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| Students using a balance to measure reagents for an experiment |
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| Lecture |
Students traveled with public transportation from Hämeenkylä that is located about 15 km from the University. The Chemistry Teacher had prepped the students ahead of time for these activities so when they started the lab work, they were like professional chemists in action. The topic covered was hydrophobia and liquid crystals.
Students love Chemistry
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| Activity to make liquid crystals |
I also had a discussion with Veli-Matti Ikävalo who is the director of Luma Center at Aalto University. This campus is located in Otaniemi which is a town next to Helsinki. The newly opened Metro takes you to campus in 15 minutes from the center of Helsinki.
“Otaniemi is a rapidly growing and developing area that unites the university's researchers, teachers and students. The new campus is developing into a unique center of cooperation that attracts partners from all around the world. An open and experimental campus encourages the sharing of ideas.”
About the Luma Center. This center is university extension where formality changes into non-formality. It tries to inspire students and educate teachers in education and research. They organize after school programs and summer camps. They focus on STEAM. This attracts more girls into program because the content is phenomena based and appeals to females. The question is always “why is this important”?
