Between tradition and future

On Saturday morning 21 mid-twenties of the Elite Graduate Program "MINT-Lehramt Plus" enter Würzburg main station. They are heading to Berlin to visit two scientific museums as part of the seminar “Extra­cur­ri­cular Learning Places”. Card games and inspired conversations helped them bridge a four-hour train ride.

First stop: “Futurium”. Duration of stay: 6 hours. The “Futurium” deals with ethical ques­tions, visions and fears of the future, artificial intelligence and the use of sus­tain­able material. We were thrilled and inspired by future-oriented and climate friendly ways of living like “Green Living” as well as by the nutrition of the future (insects instead of meat). How will we celebrate our 130th birth­day? In what kind of future do we want to live? Will we get old with our robot? What will the luck of tomorrow look like? Will I have to work in the future? What will follow the internet? All these questions bother stu­dents nowadays more than ever. The “Futu­rium” stimulates interesting dis­cus­sions and think­ing about the different ques­tions – all in all a good place to learn outside of the cur­ri­cu­lum, es­pe­cially for students of higher grades interested in dealing with political, ethical, technical and climate-related questions.

At 6 pm we leave the “Futurium” together with the last visitors of the museum and pro­ceed to the social part of the evening. We care for our creature comforts: Thai food – very spicy but also very tasty. After that we parted company: One part enjoyed the cultural program of the “Bülowhexe” the other had fun playing card and board games at the hotel. 
 

The next morning, we were told way too early to get up, pack our bags and get to the break­fast buffet, because we had to start at 10 am. The next stop is the “Spektrum” right next to the German Museum of Technology. During our 30 minutes’ walk we could rub the sand­man dust out of our eyes.

Arriving at the “Spektrum” we are excited by all the experiments and feel like children. Pushing buttons, pull levers, witch’s cottage and high voltage – that’s our thing! In con­trast to the “Futurium” the “Spektrum” offers a lot of hands-on experiments from optics, mechanics, acoustics, electrics and mag­net­ism. We also see a lot of experiments known from school which visualize theo­re­ti­cal topics of the curriculum playfully and which we can touch – aha moments gua­ran­teed. The museum is an adventure for pupils and whets their appetite for scientific prob­lems – with or without preparation by the teacher. In addition, the “Spektrum” will certainly positively affect pupils’ view on the mostly theo­re­ti­cal physics class.
 

Auch viele Expe­ri­men­te, die aus der Schu­le be­kannt sind, be­geg­nen uns wie­der und ver­an­schaulichen den theo­reti­schen Schulstoff spie­le­risch und zum An­fassen – Aha-Er­leb­nisse garan­tiert! Ob mit oder ohne Vor­berei­tung durch die Lehr­kraft – für Schü­le­rinnen und Schü­ler ist das Mu­seum sicher ein Er­lebnis und macht Lust, sich mit natur­wis­sen­schaft­lichen Fra­ge­stel­lun­gen zu be­schäf­tigen. Au­ßer­dem beein­flusst es sehr wahr­scheinlich die Sicht auf den oft theo­re­tisch ge­präg­ten Phy­sikun­ter­richt posi­tiv.

Text: 
Sophia Wohlfeld, Lukas Wolz, Nico Griesler, Jonas Merkt, Elite Graduate Program „MINT-Lehramt PLUS"