What is EU-HOU?
What is EU-HOU ?
The EU-HOU project is a collaboration of hundreds of teachers and scientists from 14 countries with the purpose of creating a way for students to get excited by science, primarily through the use of astronomy. Astronomy is one of the most popular subjects for students of all ages, and the chance to use real astronomical data to investigate volcanoes and craters on Mars or the moons of Jupiter, to discover a new planet outside our solar system, or to weigh a galaxy, can engage our students in the wonders of scientific discovery, and excite the natural scientist contained in all people young and old alike.
Research into how people learn has shown that active learning is the best way to create true engagement of students in a subject, and has also been shown to lead to better understanding and retention of material than traditional lecture-style instruction. The exercises developed by EU-HOU are designed to promote such active learning by giving student real astronomical data, and the tools to analyse it simply and easily in their own classroom. These exercises can be found here.
The key to unlocking all this learning is the free software SalsaJ (download here). This software is simple to install, runs on most systems (Windows, MacOS, and most flavors of Linux), requires almost no on-site maintenance, and has been translated into many languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Swedish, Northern Sami, Arabic, Chinese).
To learn more about EU-HOU, read our Philosophy and History pages, or contact us.
