What was the most
useful thing that we have learned in this first LTTA in Slovenia ? Well...we
think that everything was useful.
On the first hand,
we learned how to make new friends in a foreign country. We learned about the
differences between our countries. It was good because we learned new words in
a new language, we compared our ideas and we saw that even though we are not
from the same country, we have almost the same ideas and conceptions.
On the second hand,
we learned a lot of different, new and interesting things about astronomy and
the Solar System. For example, in our third day in Slovenia, we learned how to
measure the distance from the Moon to Earth using two photos from different
places of the world, we learned that Japan is one of the first countries on the
west of the International Date line- we understood about the rotation of the
Earth, but we have not realised the implications and effects that this has on
the time zones in different countries. We discovered new points of view about
why we should or why we shouldn't go on Mars.
In our fourth day, we
experimented with how the craters are made on the Moon by putting a layer of
flour in a box, then a layer of coffee and after that we threw some stones in
it and we saw how craters are made. We also built a rocket from a plastic
bottle, then we filled it with water, we pomped some air in it and we launched
it. We did this to see how Newton 's
Third Law works. We were told that the Moon will never fall on Earth and we
found out that some scientists believe that the Moon was originally a part of
Earth.
We also improved our
writing skills because each day we wrote a report of the day and we also wrote
a final report. We developed our communication in English and our social skills
because we talked with our friends from other European countries. All those
skills are useful for our Cambridge
exam and for our future personal and professional life.
We also had to do an
Enterprise project in which
we developed our negotiation and leadership skills and we also improved our
teamwork skills because we worked in a multilingual and multinational
environment. This project gave us the opportunity to develop job-related skills
(like research, working to a schedule and meeting deadlines) and also the
managerial skills (like flexibility, patience and understanding). All those
skills will help us very much in our future careers.
We also had a
stargazing session in which we discovered a lot of constellations and how to
identify them on the sky.
It was an
unforgettable experience because we had the chance to make new friends and also
to find about new things about astronomy in a European context.
ISTRATE Maria-Emma
and CIOCOIU-BUNILA Ioan-Vlad (ROMANIA )