2.1

Educational approach

Even this is an informal program for teaching science, the first step of the strategy, use the constructivism as the main factor for the activities because as many authors stands, the learning is a process where the link between the experiences and ideas meet, moreover, the ideas must be linked to complete a knowledge of the world.⁸ As a second step, the Active Learning of Optics (ALOP) philosophy was implemented on the hands-on activities, inspired in other successful works.^{9, 10} On the other hand, to complement the hands-on activities, the program includes demonstrations that are focused on the concepts and usually were not inexpensive because the main objective was to demonstrate a concept and link it with the hands-on activities.

2.2

Activities

Different demonstrations, experiments, and hands-on activities (Fig. 1)are included in the program which covers the next topics:^{2, 3, 11}

Figure 1.

Examples of hands-on optics activities performed during our events.

In addition to the activities for kids and the general public, the program “Optics for everyone” has adopted the project “Dumpster Optics” for train teachers and volunteers of the program during the past two years¹¹ as it is shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2.

a) Dumpster Optics Workshop 2018. b) Physics for everyone volunteers taking training in fall 2018

2.3

Events

The topics mentioned above and the activities conducted such as demonstrations, hands-on activities, lecturers, scientific plays, games and artistic performances have been presented in different kind of events as:

Figure 3.

International Day of Light events that include artistic and cultural activities

The implementation of the different activities in all the kind of events mentioned above, including the workshops for teachers and volunteers, has, as a result, more than 70 events that have involved more than 333 as volunteers as can be seen in the next section.

3.1

Outcomes

The program Optics for everyone includes 125 events, including visits to schools, public events and three workshops for teachers and home school parents and two multi-day workshops for volunteers since November 2013 to March 2019, the summary of this events can be seen in the Table 1 and it is shown in the figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4.

Public events.

Figure 5.

Visits to schools.

Table 1.

“Optics for everyone” events.

Table 1 shows that the number of events and the people reached has been increased every year, having more than 80,500 people reached in 5 years. The increase in the number of people reached in 2017 was due to the massive event for the Solar Eclipse where more than 15000 people participated in the astronomic observations. Fig. 6 shows the audience of the events and highlights that our target audience are the kids and teenagers.

Figure 6.

The graph shows the total of people reached every year according to its age.

The events include visits to remote communities such as Dr. Arroyo, García, Linares, Santiago, Galeana, Montemorelos and specialized education centers as the Instituto Down Monterrey and orphanages.

3.2

Volunteers

The group Physics for everyone began with no more than ten volunteers that celebrated the non-official “Physicist Day” in our country with a Science Outreach event in the Instituto Down Monterrey in December 2013 (Fig. 7). Since then, we use as one of the measures of our impact the number of volunteers that help us in every event. Fig. 8 shows how the number of people that have helped in the program has grown every year.

Figure 7.

First activity of the program Optics for everyone at the Instituto Down Monterrey.

Figure 8.

Volunteers of the program Optics for everyone by year.

Another significant result of the program is not only the number of volunteers involved, but it is also the skills our volunteers developed, such as work in teams, leadership, problem-solving, effective communication, event organization, teaching skills, develop outreach materials, among others. Also, most of our volunteers have reported that it is easier for them to learn Optics or other Science subjects in their academic curricular after conducting STEM outreach activities for one year or more. Other important skill, is conducting experiments in research laboratories because they developed mechanical abilities in the construction of outreach materials and performing science demonstrations, that allow them to get used to handling lab equipment efficiently. Finally, some of the volunteers that look for a job just after gained his/her bachelor degree find that is easy for them to work as basic education teachers or as staff in Science Museums.

3.3

Joint projects

The success of the program allowed the group Physics for everyone to join other important national projects with the Light, Optics and Photonics activities such as:

4.1

Future work

The next step in this project is to improve our activities including more STEM activities that involve technology to increase the interest in the activities and involve other skills as the use of computers or electronics in the process of learning about Light. Besides, we are looking for effective ways to measure the impact and the quality of our activities.

The program “Optics for everyone” is not a work finished yet, but we will continue working to improve our activities and increase the awareness about Light, Optics and Photonics.