Interesting and delightful science experiments can help students spark imagination, boost learning and lure students to like science. Soon, such experiments - done in classrooms at 18,000 schools and tutorial schools in Japan - will be brought to Thailand.
The experiments can also help science teachers, who have not graduated directly in science and may not be familiar with preparing experiments for students, make their science classrooms more interesting.
Nanmeebooks last Thursday officially launched the science experiment classroom project at its office in Bangkok after it adopted this educational service from Gakken Educational Co.
Tetsuya Onodera, president of Gakken Educational and CEO of Gakken Jyuku Holdings, said Gakken had long experience in producing standard and interesting instructional media and educational books and magazines to educate Japanese students.
"Japanese students have fun when they join classes that teach our science experiments," said Onodera during the launch.
Grade 16 students are eligible to attend these experiment classrooms. They will learn about air, magnets, sounds, batteries, electricity, static electricity, vibration, pressure and freezing point from over 150 experiments provided for teaching in one year.
He said the experiments would encourage them to ask 'why' and 'how' and challenge students to find answers.
Students do the experiments along with other classmates and their teacher first, then each do their own handson experiments. Finally, they complete their learning by drawing and noting down what they have learned from their experiments on their notebooks.
Animations are presented to explain principles of the experiments more clearly to make students better understand. Both teachers and students are given science kits.
Suwadee Chongsatitwattana managing director of Nanmeebooks said Japanese staff from Gakken would train her staff, who would act as core trainers for Thai teachers.
Nanmeebooks would introduce the science experiment classroom to interested schools during the National Science and Technology Fair to be held from August 16 - 17 at Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Bitec).
"This will be the first move. So, interested people and private schools can contact us to join a meeting to held at the fair to learn more about the project," she said.
"We also plan to open a few science experiment classrooms at the office of Nanmeebooks in Bangkok, which we expect to launch late August or early September. So, parents can take their children to do the experiments with us as well," Suwadee added.
Each school would pay about Bt592,000, but Suwadee said this was not final. The company would try to control the price so more schools would have access to use the Japanese experiments.