MOMSTER, a Europlanet-funded STEAM education project

MOMSTER (MObile Meteor STation for Education & outreach) has developed a Meteor Education Kit as a resource for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) teachers in secondary schools. This kit includes a mobile radio meteor station consisting of a dedicated antenna and radio receiver, as well as an educational package to learn all about meteors and their impact on the atmosphere and the planet as a whole, while at the same time conveying a fascination for the ephemeral beauty and complexity of these natural light shows. The project goals are stimulating STEAM (ultimately resulting in nudging future career choices towards science or engineering career paths) and the use of citizen science (especially the Radio Meteor Zoo initiative on the online citizen science platform Zooniverse) at schools, and reaching the general public.

The development of educational resources builds upon preliminary experiences we gained by participating in an Erasmus+ project called BRITEC (Bringing Research into ThE Classroom), in which teachers and pupils participated in the Radio Meteor Zoo activity. The following educational resources are available in Dutch and French on the MOMSTER website (https://momster.aeronomie.be):

• Geography: relationship between comets and meteors
• Arts: infographics & science-based art
• Mathematics & IT: calculation of distances using Pythagoras’ theorem and working with a spreadsheet

More teaching materials are currently under development, especially about mathematics (geometry used to retrieve the meteoroid’s path) and geography (meteorites in Antarctica).

How are inclusion issues taken into account?

The project manager having a physical disability, we are well aware and acknowledge the challenges people with disabilities face. The developed material will be accessible for them. Moreover, the fact that the data are also made audible in real time opens up the experience and the data interpretation to people with visual disabilities.

Bringing the device to the schools is, within this context, also a unique opportunity to more easily get in contact with youngsters who would otherwise get less chances to do so (children with a disability or living in underprivileged families, boys as well as girls), and the art component may attract students who initially lack STEM interests. The design of our concept implies an increased potential to reach those who are often missed.

What innovative methods of science education can help to promote teaching and dissemination of science, and involve the schools?

Space and atmospheric science are STEM disciplines par excellence, involving various science fields (physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, geography, engineering, ...). As a subject triggering the imagination, the “study of shooting stars and meteor showers" has the potential to raise interest in STEM disciplines and increase science information retention by linking with art and citizen science, both in formal and informal education. We foster collaborations with teachers from secondary schools to boost interest in the science behind these phenomena.