The Science and Technology Academic and Research-Based Openly Operated Kiosks or STARBOOKS of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) have arrived on the island of San Miguel in Tabaco, Albay, providing easy access to S&T learning.
STARBOOKS is the country’s first digital science library, created by the Science and Technology Information Institute (DOST-STII). It is a stand-alone information source intended for those who have limited or no access to S&T information resources.
The project’s goal is to provide Science, Technology, and Innovation (ST&I) content to geographically isolated schools and communities across the country. STARBOOKS contains many digitized S&T resources in various formats such as text and video or audio organised in specially designed “pods” with an easy-to-use interface.
STARBOOKS, as SMNHS teacher John Darnell Balbastro put it, is “one way of elevating the scientific and technological literacy” of their students. Its wide range of digitised S&T resources in various formats will “intensify the curiosity among our young learners,” and its offline access will address the lack of S&T learning resources in San Miguel.
Through this programme, DOST Region V, in collaboration with its dedicated Provincial S&T Centres and implementers, will continue to promote and empower S&T knowledge and education.
Meanwhile, Jamaica Pangasinan, Senior Science Research Specialist at the Space Mission Control and Operations Division (SMCOD) of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA), said that she was impressed by the level of environmental and social awareness of the incoming senior high school students, which was shown in their work at the “LIFT OFF: PhilSA Space Science Camp 2022.”
She said that the mission goals showed how eager the students were to solve the problems and threats facing the environment right now.
Fourteen science high schools from the 16 divisions of Metro Manila chosen by the Department of Education (DepEd) to attend the camp presented their space missions. Each team had five (5) minutes to talk about their satellite’s mission, its most important technical features, and why it was important.
The students came up with a wide range of missions, from observing Earth to keeping an eye on space junk to sending probes to other planets.
Only two missions were better than the rest. These are the Monitoring Illegal Mining Activities in Remote Areas (MIMA) by Bianca Louise B. Cruz and Oscar A. Araja II of the City of Mandaluyong Science High School, and the Venus Seismic Activity Monitoring Satellite (V-SAMS) by Peter James Lyon and Ysabela Juliana Bernardo of the Caloocan City Science High School.
The students who work on MIMA said that the goal of their satellite mission is to protect the environment and make sure that mining laws and rules are followed better in the country. Based on their plan, MIMA would be a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite that could see through clouds to spot changes in areas where mining could be happening. It would take pictures with the help of optical imagers.
The goal of V-SAMS, on the other hand, would be to learn more about Venus, which is like Earth’s twin, and especially about its earthquakes. To do this, V-SAMS would use infrared imaging to track the surface temperature of Venus’s volcanoes, figure out which ones will erupt, and find other volcanoes that are still active on the planet.
It would also have an interferometric SAR (InSAR) to look for changes on Venus’s surface and signs of earthquakes. V-SAMS would also have an optical payload that would let it take high-resolution pictures.