A Touch of Space Weather - Outreach project for visually impaired students

'A Touch of Space Weather' is a project that brings space weather science into the hands of blind and visually impaired high-school students. This project was awarded an EGU Public Engagement Grant in 2021.

 

We address three challenges: 

• There is a high demand for educational material addressing STEM topics for blind and visually impaired students (B&VI).
• During the covid pandemic, teachers and supporters of B&VI students required audio educational material.
• Tactile images that translate visual content for B&VI students are needed. The challenge is to create them so that everyone can easily reproduce them.

 

Why space weather?

This project wants to highlight the importance of space weather, as it influences nearly every aspect of our modern life ranging from banking, navigation, and telecommunications to the power supply. It is an interdisciplinary subject and, therefore, ideal for explaining complex scientific topics. 

All topics addressed in this project are main points in science high-school education, such as the Sun, Earth's atmosphere, Earth's magnetic field, Radiation dose, and others. The explanation of these topics is done through the 'space weather lenses' to assure that the students understand the effects of cosmic radiation, solar wind and other phenomena on the human body, technology and infrastructure.

 

What do we develop?

• Audio booklets that address specific topics related to space weather while being relevant to high school education 
• Tactile images that help blind and visually impaired students to feel visual content relevant to the audio booklets

1) Audio booklets

The audio booklets will cover 12 topics:

• Sun
• Solar storm
• Earth's atmosphere
• Earth's magnetic field
• Radiation dose
• Aurora
• Moon exploration
• Space flight
• Mars
• Animal's magnetoreception

After receiving feedback from a group of six educators and teaching supporters for B&VI students, we have found out high priority topics that will be prepared first.

The audio booklets will be provided in three languages:

• Dutch
• French
• English.

2) Tactile images and 3D models

Transformation of visual content into tactile content is not easy and needs plenty of tryouts. We developed nine tactile images that help to envision content from the audio booklets:

• The Sun
• Earth's atmosphere
• Earth's magnetic field
• Formation of aurora
• Aurora
• Radio communication
• Geomagnetically induced electrical currents
• Space weather effects
• Radiation belts

All tactile images are made from easy-to-get materials from hobby shops. This way, everyone can reproduce the tactile images, not only the teacher but also family members & friends of B&VI students.

We have selected 11 models for 3D printing relevant to the project's topics. These models are public, and anyone with a 3D printer can print them out.

How do we share the content?

We will share the content physically with Belgian schools for B&VI students and publicly online.

1) 'A Touch of Space Weather' boxes

Several 'A Touch of Space Weather' boxes will be distributed to the schools and organisations providing education to B&VI people in Belgium. Each box will include one USB stick with all audio booklets, several 3D printed models and a set of tactile images. 

Non-B&VI students will prepare the tactile images during several workshops at regular high schools. In the first part of the workshop, non B&VI students will learn about space weather, and in the second part, they will create a set of tactile images based on our instructions. This way, students that are not blind will learn about space weather and inclusiveness. All images prepared by these students will be given to B&VI students through our boxes.

2) Website

To make the materials accessible online, we will provide them publicly on our website in three languages. In addition, tutorials and downloadable templates for tactile images will help teachers and parents to create tactile images; audio booklets will be streamable and downloadable.

 

Additional engagement

To engage B&VI students from the beginning, we organised a contest searching for a jingle that will be used as an introduction to each of the audio booklets. The winning jingles will be included in all our audio booklets.

In May 2022; we visited De Kade and provided two workshops for blind students. We have received their feedback on the materials we develop.