During the previous week, students of Savremena International School had a chance to acquaint themselves with the life and work of one of the greatest world’s inventors and scientists of Serbian ancestry, a man who was argued to have “illuminated the planet”. As you can guess, we are talking about the visit to Nikola Tesla’s Museum.

What did the visit comprise?

Savremena International School fosters the principle that every activity organised needs to be well-designed and thought through beforehand, so that the students wouldn’t just be passive observers, but active participants in the contents before them. That way, each visit or manifestation makes sense and stays in our memory for a longer time, and on top of all that, our students acquire knowledge they can apply afterwards.

The visit to Nikola Tesla Museum contained several activities - a fifteen-minute film about Nikola Tesla, demonstration of five experiments (Egg of Columbus, Niagara Falls, big and small transformer, and remote-control boat)., participation of our students in the experiments, and our students’ making presentations.

Our students took part in the experiments

The most interesting part of the visit was when students took part in the experiment with a big and small transformer. They were literally “conductors” transmitting electricity in order to power up the neon lamps.

Students especially liked the second experiment, when they formed an electrical circuit by holding hands and thus channeling electricity to the furthermost student who held the lamp. The lamp lit up, which meant that the experiment was successful.

Students’ presentations

During the visit, our students had their iPads and they were supposed to make presentations about what they saw, learnt and heard. They were divided into groups of four. In order to include all students in a group, all presentations should investigate four different topics. Our students could choose one of Tesla’s inventions and describe it, analyse it, and most importantly, think about the world today without the Tesla’s invention they described.

Moreover, their presentations were also about Tesla’s wise thoughts our students needed to ponder upon, and also about his unusual life and habits. The most interesting task was to put themselves in Tesla’s position and to think about what the world would need today and what invention would improve our lives, just like Tesla’s inventions did.

Students’ impressions

Our students were very interested and active. They enjoyed the possibility to participate actively, both in filming the museum with their iPads and in the experiments they found entertaining and educational. Through laughing and fun, they learned how to conduct electricity and how Tesla’s transformers worked. We are sure they enjoyed the visit, since they expressed interest in reading more about Tesla’s inventions.

You can see pictures in our gallery.