Mobile laboratory to boost science awareness
Mobile laboratory to boost science awareness
P.C. Naommy
Jakarta
The government has launched the country's first mobile science
laboratory on Thursday, in conjunction with the opening of the
second Indonesian Science Festival, to raise the level of
scientific learning.
The prototype was designed in a 2002 interdisciplinary project
involving faculty and students of the Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB). The lab was completed the following year at a
production cost of about Rp 600 million (US$64,516), with a
maximum capacity of 40 students.
Data from the Ministry of National Education shows that about
one-third of the 8,558 state high schools across Indonesia do not
have laboratory facilities for conducting science experiments,
especially those schools in remote areas.
Maria Widiani, an official at the ministry's Directorate
General of Public Intermediate Education, said the figure does
not include Islamic high schools and other institutes with poor
lab facilities.
"We currently have only one prototype mobile laboratory. We
hope that with this road show, all municipalities will be
encouraged to provide at least one mobile lab to serve schools
that can't afford expensive laboratory equipment," she said.
Director General of Elementary and Intermediate Education
Indra Djati Sidi said of the 400 municipalities in the country,
about 200 were located in remote rural areas.
"We have yet to set our production target, but at least 25
percent of the municipalities in rural areas should have this
facility," said Indra.
Indra added that instead of instructing municipal
administrations to buy the mobile lab, the road show would
explain the direct benefits of the facility. The road show will
also include teachers training workshops and school visits.
The festival's head of education, Handikin, said the mobile
lab had visited Subang and Indramayu in West Java for up to six
weeks in 2003.
"We allocated the first two days of our road show in Subang
and Indramayu toward holding training sessions for teachers, and
we used the rest of the time to visit schools, at least a week
for every school," he said.
The science festival will run for the next three months. It
was initiated with an aim to bring science closer to students
through combining education and entertainment, or edutainment,
explaining how science affects our daily lives.
Hundreds of students from the elementary to high school levels
will participate in several competitions during the festival,
including the three-day National Astronomy Olympiad competition,
which begins in Jakarta and Bandung on June 24 and is to involve
62 students from junior high and high schools.
A six-day competition, the Indonesian School Debate
Championship 2004, in which 102 high school students are to
compete, also starts on June 24 in Jakarta.
Meanwhile, the National Science Olympiad, to be held in August
in Pekanbaru, Riau, will involve hundreds of primary and
secondary school students from all over Indonesia.
The festival will close on Sept. 22.