Hours of thinking and a day or more in execution. Preparing a model for an educational purpose that summarizes an entire lesson or unit of a book passed on to generations, is not easy, especially if the Palestinian engineer Mays Abu Hijleh is the one who undertakes that.
Mays did not go far in her thinking when she wanted to make the model for her child, and did not know that she would become a professional in the manufacture of educational tools and models, and that what she did was not a school duty, and that the benefactor is not her son alone, but rather a "rescue" for thousands of students.
Mays Abu Hajleh and her son Faris ... she produces her work inside the house, taking a corner in the kitchen as a place for it (Al-Jazeera)
The story goes back to 6 years ago, at that time, Mays’s son, Moataz, was a child in the first grade, drawing knowledge from an Arabic language lesson entitled “My School”, so I took the initiative to bring the idea to his mind by making a model of his school building with all its contents and details, even the glasses, which were placed on a large table Indicated that it is the manager's room.
This distinction motivated Lamis to produce more than two thousand models and educational aids, which she provided to several schools in the West Bank and university students in more modern and proficient ways to market it as a work to make, and she used websites and libraries as a means for that, before it became famous in the last two years.
Mays tries to communicate the idea from the lessons through her models (Al-Jazeera)
Three dimensional
In her home in the Al-Masaken Al-Shabia neighborhood in the city of Nablus (northern West Bank), the computer engineer, Mays Abu Hajleh, prepares the teaching aids, and takes from a table in the middle of the kitchen as a place for that, and from there she does her homework and teaches her child as well.
When we met her, Mays had finished preparing the plant cell model, and started doing another work, and by clicking on the TV remote control, she showed us dozens of videos that he produced herself and posted them on YouTube and social networking sites.
To spread the benefit and increase its promotion.
The object does not differ from the educational method in terms of its goal, which is to facilitate the arrival of information to the student and establish it in his mind, and in preparation and implementation.
But the matter is different for Mays. The method may be a drawing with some interactive movements added to it. As for anthropomorphism, it is the conversion of texts and information into shapes that embody and demonstrate them, and distinguish them more, making them "three-dimensional".
With our eyes, you can see these models and gain access to their details and method of work, and they vary between scientific subjects such as physics and mathematics.
Such as long division anthropomorphism, the planets of the solar system, and the humanities;
Like the Arabic language and Islamic education, which I embodied in my school projects and the pillars of Islam.
Close up, we saw Mays’s work, and we moved with her to the Pioneer Baccalaureate School, where she prepared a model of the "amusement park", which simulates the geometric transformations in mathematics represented by states of rotation, reflection and withdrawal (transition), and how the geometric shape keeps the length of the sides and the measure of angles constant.
A model of the planets of the solar system prepared with scales and colors similar to reality (Al-Jazeera)
Communicate the idea
Mays tells Al-Jazeera Net that she became a master in drawing and games of intelligence, which made her excel in her high school and university studies, and facilitated her task in embodying educational aids, and therefore she studies the idea, examines its scientific sources and the mechanism of its work.
To drop it as a reality with the aim of "persuading students and urging them to think."
She added that the models serve students of all ages, in a way that fulfills the teacher's need to convey information precisely and make it a tangible thing in the hands of the student. It also constitutes an essential support for students of special needs, especially "mental disability", who face learning difficulties.
The models are characterized by their mastery, low cost, light weight, and safer and more durable.
It does not contain toxic or fragile materials, and part of it is based on the "recycling" of solid waste, especially empty carton and iron packages, advertising banners and others.
The lack of the presence and spread of the models played a major role in encouraging Mays to produce more "intelligent and creative" means, albeit at the expense of long time "and staying up for the dawn hours" to produce her work, which she described with her slogan "M & M", referring to the first two letters. From her name and the name of her son Moataz.
Mays figures of different types and shapes (the island)
Follow-up and tracking of development
Far away, Mays went with her thinking, kept up with developments and made her work flexible and transmitted it to the public through social networking sites, so she prepared dozens of videos accompanied by her son Moataz, with a full explanation of the sound and image of many of the models.
To communicate information to everyone, especially those who cannot afford it.
Moataz, Mays’s son, says that he helps his mother with everything she needs, starting with choosing ideas, implementing them, photographing and promoting them among his peers, which makes him superior and explored as other students for the mechanism of each model.
Just as the students, teachers - and “university professors as well” - benefited from Mays’s sculptures, and they kept asking her to produce more of them, especially in light of the “urgent” need for them, and she, in turn, follows up with them the “impact” of their use and presentation to students.
The teacher, Fayhaa Hanawi, who specializes in teaching through the means and models in Nablus, attributes this need to the momentum of the curricula, their failure to keep pace with developments, the difficulty of dealing with them, and the lack of qualification of the teacher in line with scientific developments, and she says to Al-Jazeera Net, "During the past five years, the demand for the models has doubled significantly. .
On the basis of “What has been written, and what has been read,” Hanawi sees the importance of these models, especially since she was able through it to convey information to students with high accuracy as they touch it with their hands, and says, “Teaching with models means moving from the physical to the semi-perceptual, up to the abstract.” In this way, the student absorbs more.
In front of her continuous success, Mays stands in full swing to provide her best in an attempt to overcome the difficulties that may face, especially the time factor and student need, and this is what she translates with great ambition to establish a huge center for the production of these means in larger quantities.