About

About Us

We seeks to attract, expose and encourage 14-17 year old students to pursue science careers

SAEON Environmental Science Education Programmes

The environmental science education programme (ESEP) is implemented through inter-actions with SAEON science engagement officers, scientists and technicians. SAEON Nodes provide unique opportunities for long-term ecological research. The integration of research into the education outreach activities contributes to an improved understanding of long-term and large scale ecological processes for learners and educators.

Programme implementation

Work with selected schools in the vicinity of four of our nodes:

Node-based activities

School-based monitoring:

School-based monitoring projects at schools around their nodes. These programmes give learners and educators the opportunity to develop their data literacy, statistics and data visualisation skills. They are also encouraged to use this data to design projects for science expos and competitions.

Weather Stations:
Automatic weather stations have been set up at schools. Learners are exposed to data analysis and interpretation using the data collected from their school’s weather station. The data is used as part of the regular teaching curriculum and offers a fantastic opportunity to link science to data that is relevant and localised.

Argo Floats
Argo Floats are used by the Egagasini Node to expose learners to data analysis and interpretation. Learners utilise data from Argo Floats to conceptualise and design reaserch projects.

Science Awareness:

SciFest
National Science Week
National Marine Week
School based science days

Learner Support:

SAEON Staff, including the scientists and technicians, are closely involved with learners and educators in selected schools, and are committed to assisting and mentoring these learners from grade 9 to 11.

Science Camps

Learners are hosted for a week of fun and hands-on science activties. During science camps learners conceptualise and design their own mini-research projects. They allso collect and analyse data. Finally they present the findings from their mini-research project.

Workshops

Educators are encouraged and equipped to creatively teach science by incorporating monitoring data and data gathering exercises in the classroom. SAEON implements educator training workshops and develops educator training manuals for environmental science education programmes.

SAEON Kids Competition

The SAEON Kids competition encourages learners to become passionately curious about environmental science and develop innovative environmental science projects.

Eskom and other Science Expos

We encourage and assist learners with science projects that are presented at these expos. SAEON also awards prizes at the Eskom Expo International Science Fair for the best projects related to environmental monitoring.

Key focus of the education programme

• Primarily encourage science skills to learners

• Create a platform where environmental science research can be integrated into the school science curriculum

• Promote an understanding and create awareness in Environmental sciences.

Key outcomes of the ESEP are to:

• Improve the quality of science teaching through teacher support programmes;

• Increase the understanding of science monitoring through schools-based programmes;

• Expose learners to science awareness programmes in order to inform, excite, motivate and attract them to careers in science;

• Integrate graduate students and scientists into the ESEP;

• Improve understanding and management of natural resources by communities;

• Drive inter-organisational and international communication, learning and collaboration;

• Develop capacity/skills and learning through effective use of external resources.