When hands-on science reaches beyond the screen: Nuri and Ilia’s journey into science: storytelling, inquiry and hands-on learning in a regional Virtual Hub
[[{“value”:”
CC-BY Antonella Sanna.
Figure 1. Nuri and Ilia, the main characters in the storybook used during the workshop. Characters, narrative concept, visual direction and prompts by Antonella Sanna; illustration generated with a custom Google Gemini Gem.
Can a remotely led science workshop still be hands-on, participatory and shared? In the 2025 EFT Virtual Hub, the screen did not replace the laboratory: it connected around ten classrooms in which children continued to observe, handle materials, move and build.
Many classrooms, one shared laboratory
In 2025, Sardinia’s Équipe Formativa Territoriale (EFT), a regional network of teacher educators supporting schools with digital teaching innovation, organised a series of Virtual Hubs for different educational stages. The workshop I designed and led brought together early-years groups and primary classes in the same session.
For two hours, around ten classes joined simultaneously from their own classrooms. I guided the narrative, posed the questions and paced each stage of the inquiry; the teachers in the classrooms organised the children, distributed materials, ensured safety and adapted the work to the age and needs of their groups. Digital technology did not move the experiments onto the screen: it connected what was happening in each school.
A story that sets inquiry in motion
The thread running through the workshop was a multimedia storybook about Nuri and Ilia, recurring characters in a wider narrative project. I created the characters, narrative concept, visual direction and prompts, including the type of imagery to be used. I then developed the storybook with a custom Google Gemini Gem, using my prompts to generate the illustrations. Each episode was self-contained, so classes meeting Nuri and Ilia for the first time could enter the story straight away.
This choice sits at the intersection of storytelling and inquiry-based science education. Storytelling can help make science more meaningful and accessible, as argued by Avraamidou and Osborne (2009), while the sequence of question, prediction, investigation and interpretation reflects principles developed by the European Fibonacci project for inquiry-based science learning.
In the adventure, Nuri and Ilia found Professor Spillo’s notebook, whose pages had gone missing. The professor appeared through an effect described in the fictional narrative as a ‘hologram’; in reality, it was a hologram-like optical illusion, not a hologram in the physical sense. He gave the children a mission: retrieve the pages through observation, hands-on activities and discovery. The narrative did not merely decorate the workshop; it determined what the children did. Each activity moved the story forward and restored part of the notebook.
During the live session, music, sound effects, short videos and the opening of the laboratory’s virtual doors signalled each new stage of the mission. They were not decorative interludes: they helped remote classes of different ages find a shared rhythm, recognise the start of a new challenge and maintain continuity between story and action.
Before each activity, we posed a question. The children made a prediction and recorded it in the Scientist’s Notebook in an age-appropriate way. This was followed by the activity, observation and reflection on what had been discovered. The sequence included a foaming volcano, a walking-water experiment, a physical representation of the states of matter inspired by Total Physical Response (TPR), an experiment in which gas inflated a balloon, and the construction of a small device for observing the hologram-like illusion. TPR originated in language teaching, where understanding spoken instructions is linked to a physical response; here it was not used as a method for teaching science, but only as an inspiration for representing the states of matter through the body. Handling materials, movement, making and technology all contributed to the mission.
The classes worked at the same time, but did not have to carry out every step in exactly the same way. In early-years groups, a prediction might be expressed orally or through a drawing; primary pupils could record it more independently. A common rhythm made shared facilitation possible, while local adaptation avoided imposing the same level of writing, organisation or support on everyone.
The hologram-like illusion completed the narrative arc: the mysterious element introduced at the beginning became an optical effect that the children could make and observe during the live session. By the end, Professor Spillo’s notebook had been restored, and each class received a customisable ‘Science Explorer’ certificate.
Distributed facilitation: preparation, adaptation and privacy
The workshop’s success also depended on preparation that was kept to the essentials but carefully planned. In a preliminary online meeting lasting about an hour, I presented the workshop plan and guidance on setting up the classroom, forming pairs or small groups, protecting work surfaces, managing materials and treating an unsuccessful experiment as an opportunity to check the procedure and propose new hypotheses.
The teachers were then provided with a kit containing the Scientist’s Notebook, activity sheets, a mission letter, a short guide, printable resources and links to video tutorials. The materials were hosted on Scuola Futura, Italy’s national professional-development platform for school staff, and on a shared online board. Class teachers decided whether children would use the notebook individually, in pairs or in small groups, and adjusted the timing and support to suit their class.
Protecting children’s privacy was part of the design. The children could see me and follow the session, but they were neither filmed nor heard directly online. Teachers relayed predictions, questions and observations through the microphone or chat; whenever possible, the camera showed only the work surface, not the children.
A separate shared board was used for documentation. Photographs and short videos without faces or voices, together with comments, were uploaded mainly during the live session. At intervals, I shared the board on screen so that each class could see the progress made in other schools and recognise itself as part of the same regional mission.
CC-BY Antonella Sanna.
Figure 2. Illustrative visualisation of the distributed Virtual Hub workshop. To protect children’s privacy, and because consent to publish real photographs had not been obtained, the setting is represented by an image generated with OpenAI from a prompt developed by the author on the basis of the activities actually carried out. The figure does not document a particular class.
Qualitative traces and lessons for design
The shared contributions also included children’s observations reported by their teachers: ‘Miss, we’re a gaseous class!’, ‘The molecules in ice are packed really tightly, while the molecules in water vapour escape all the way up to the sky!’ and, after several attempts to create the hologram-like illusion, ‘Miss, look: Nemo is inside the bottle!’ These observations were relayed during the workshop and are reproduced here without names, school references or other identifying details. The image of molecules ‘escaping all the way up to the sky’ is an effective trace of children’s thinking, but it is not fully accurate in physical terms: it should be treated as a starting point for distinguishing intuitive language from the scientific model, not as a formulation to be validated.
These remarks do not measure learning outcomes, and the teachers’ positive feedback does not constitute evidence of effectiveness. They do, however, offer qualitative traces of the children’s engagement and of how they made sense of the experience through language, their bodies and familiar points of reference. Several transferable design principles also emerged.
The story must drive action. An effective mission asks questions, guides the activities and gives purpose to each stage, rather than remaining in the background.
A common sequence does not require identical organisation. Prediction, hands-on activity, observation and discovery provided a shared structure, while grouping, timing and forms of support remained adaptable.
Preparing the adults includes planning for privacy. Well-organised materials, advance guidance and clear rules about who may be seen or heard and what content may be shared allow teachers to focus on the children without exposing them online.
Documentation must return to the participants. Sharing the board during the session turns photographs and comments into a sense of shared presence between remote classrooms.
The experience does not show that a remote workshop produces better learning than other formats. It does, however, show a practical possibility: when the design keeps action in the classroom, prepares teachers and establishes a shared rhythm, distance need not turn children into spectators. In Nuri and Ilia’s Virtual Hub, technology supported facilitation, storytelling and connection. The children remained active agents: the questions and materials stayed in their hands, while movement and discovery were experienced through their bodies.
About the author
Antonella Sanna is a primary school teacher, teacher trainer and Scientix Ambassador based in Sardinia, Italy. As a member of Sardinia’s Équipe Formativa Territoriale, she supports schools and teachers in digital innovation and educational practice. Her interests include science education, AI literacy, computational thinking and inclusive learning design.
The post When hands-on science reaches beyond the screen: Nuri and Ilia’s journey into science: storytelling, inquiry and hands-on learning in a regional Virtual Hub appeared first on Scientix blog.
“}]]