Diary of the sixth science camp
Written by Rama Muady

Today was the first day of the sixth season of Ebtikar science camp for students and teachers hosted in the German Jordanian University (GJU). It started with an amazing word from GJU President, Prof. Ala’aldeen Al- Halhouli, who shared his knowledge and wisdom with all of the audience. It was then followed with the astonishing lecture and workshop with (Eng.Khaled El Shaham)in which he shared his very inspiring objective of restoring hope to the Jordanian youth. Two very fun and interesting experiments both revolving around electronics and building circuits took place in that workshop and both the students and teachers absorbed the knowledge and information given to them with the help of the volunteers who explained the steps of the experiments, By the end of the day you could tell by the faces of all the participants that they couldn’t wait to see what insightful and exciting surprises will they face in this camp in the days following.

On the second day of Ebtikar’s science camp, the students and teachers were separated in order for both to focus in specialized activities that were designed for each groups. Both students and teachers enjoyed a full day of different hands on experiments and little and fun competitions. Students focused on mechanical and robotic experiments like making a very simplified model of racing car and building a wooden model of an arm robot just to list few while teachers focused on doing more scientific experiments that follows the STEAME program involving an activity about the science of flavoring where teachers were asked to make a special tea using different herbs and spices and an activity were they worked in groups to build a simplified version of an air conditioning unit. You can see the spark of learning in everybody’s eyes all throughout the day.

The third day of the science camp was full of learning and gaining knowledge. Teachers had a full day of geological experiments and lectures where they came to a deep understanding different types of rocks while students focused on studying different things form the world around us like studying more deeply about shapes and there was even a segment about the plants we usually see around us that was conducted outside in nature.

The sixth scientific Innovation camp for teachers and students has come to an end. In the last three days of the camp the teachers and students had two joined day and one day in which they were separated. The forth day was full of affordable experiments in which the students and teachers enjoyed trying and discovering the explanation of each experiment. On the fifth day, the students focused on learning more about lights and shadows through simple but fun experiments implementing the STEAME program while teachers had a full day under the name “historical experiments” in which they deeply studied the history of the science of communication and tried a bunch of the scientist’s, Galileo, experiments. The sixth and final day of the camp was an amazing day that involved a little competition between few groups made of both teachers and students, in this competition the participants had the chance to test there hypothesis on how to solve different problems and answer different questions. After the competition was done and the winners were announced, everyone moved on to the graduation. Wise words were shared by many people like the ICDA Chairperson, Surayya Ayyad, and the president of GJU, Prof. Ala’aldeen Al- Halhouli and many many more, they were then followed by distributing the certificates to all people involved in the camp and many more participants in courses organized by ICDA and GJU. By the end of the camp you could clearly feel how much people in it have grown in their knowledge and even in their personality, looking forward to see what wonderful achievement will our participants achieve later in life and hoping to see new faces at next years scientific Innovation camp.