A few building blocks is all it takes to stimulate scientific curiosity in students, says François Grey.

Many of us will agree that academic hands-on projects are more friendly and effective than long boring lectures in enticing student’s interest. In 1996, in a journal called the National Teaching & Learning Forum, two professors from Indiana University — Joan Middendorf and Alan Kalish —described how research on human attention and retention speaks against the value of long lectures viagra genérico españa.

In our May issue of in the classroom, François Grey tells us how he has used a hands-on approach to engage students of the summer school LEGO2NANO, held annually at Tsinghua University, in learning about nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale.

This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced. He challenged student teams to come up, in a week time, with a prototype atomic force microscope that could be used in Chinese schools – with a maximum budget of US$1000. After the success François is also involved in the launch of a more permanent initiative, called Lifelong Learning Lab which is aimed at fostering creativity in the classroom.