VELLORE: The Vellore unit of the Tamil Nadu Science Forum (TNSF), in association with the Education Department, is offering a special training programme for school teachers on October 16 at Annai Mira Engineering College at Arapakkam between 10 am and 5 pm. The programme will train teachers to guide students aspiring to take part in the 22nd National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC) scheduled to be held from December 27 to December 31.
Teachers from all schools, including government and private schools, are eligible to receive training from TNSF. Training sessions on how to help children visualise a theme, how to conduct field work, collection of data, project-work and preparation of project reports will be conducted.
A team of six professors, and scientists and juries of the previous NCSC deliberations will be imparting training to teachers. A training manual prepared by TNSF will also be distributed.
According to K Viswanathan, secretary of the TNSF, the NCSC provides children from all over the country from 10 to 17 years of age a unique opportunity to use their aptitude for science and scientific knowledge for the benefit of society.
Conceived and initiated in 1993, NCSC provides a forum for young scientists to conduct experiments on open-ended problems raising children’s confidence and self-esteem by making them feel that they can be instrumental in solving problems faced by society. Viswanathan said that TNSF helps build a generation of sensitive, responsible citizens with a scientific outlook and by adopting scientific methods to solve problems.
The focal theme of this year’s NCSC is ‘Understanding the weather and climate’ with sub-themes of ‘weather around you’, ‘impact of human activities on weather and climate’, ‘weather, climate and ecosystem’, ‘weather, climate-society and culture’, ‘weather, climate and agriculture’ and ‘weather, climate and health’.
“The screening of projects at the district level will be held in the second/third week of November while the State level screening will be held in the last week of December. Around 500 children are expected to be selected and take part in the five-day long deliberations and fun filled science activities. The President will be conferring the Young Scientist Award on those whose projects are judged to be the best at Bengaluru this year,” he said.