Inspired by traditional medicine, 17-year-old Tomás Orellana is on a mission to identify plants that can help treat students’ health issues.
Sara Feijo | MIT Open Learning
Tomás Orellana, a 17-year-old high school student in Chile, had a vision: to create a kit of medicinal plants for Chilean school infirmaries. But first, he needed to understand the basic principles of pharmacology. That’s when Orellana turned to the internet and stumbled upon a gold mine of free educational resources and courses on the MIT OpenCourseWare website.
Right away, Orellana completed class HST.151 (Principles of Pharmacology), learning about the mechanisms of drug action, dose-response relations, pharmacokinetics, drug delivery systems, and more. He then shared this newly acquired knowledge with 16 members of his school science group so that together they could make Orellana’s vision a reality.
“I used the course to guide my classmates in the development of a phyto-medicinal school project, demonstrating in practice the innovation that the OpenCourseWare platform offers,” Orellana says in Spanish. “Thanks to the pharmacology course, I can collect and synthesize the information we need to learn to prepare the medicines for our project.”
OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free educational resources on its website from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT curriculum, from introductory to advanced classes. A global model for open sharing in higher education, OpenCourseWare has an open license that allows the remix and reuse of its educational resources, which include video lectures, syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, assignments, audiovisual content, and insights.
After completing the Principles of Pharmacology course, Orellana and members of his science group began extracting medicinal properties from plants, such as cedron, and studying them in an effort to determine which plants are best to grow in a school environment. Their goal, Orellana says, is to help solve students’ health problems during the school day, including menstrual, mental, intestinal, and respiratory issues.
“There is a tradition regarding the use of medicinal plants, but there is no scientific evidence that says that these properties really exist,” the 11th-grader explains. “What we want to do is know which plants are the best to grow in a school environment.”
Orellana’s science group discussed their scientific project on “Que Sucede,” a Chilean television show, and their interview will air soon. The group plans to continue working on their medicinal project during this academic year.
Next up on Orellana’s learning journey is the mysteries of the human brain. He plans to complete class 9.01 (Introduction to Neuroscience) through OpenCourseWare. His ultimate goal? To pursue a career in health sciences and become a professor so that he may continue to share knowledge — widely.
“I dream of becoming a university academic to have an even greater impact on current affairs in my country and internationally,” Orellana says. “All that will happen if I try hard enough.”
Orellana encourages learners to explore MIT Open Learning’s free educational resources, including OpenCourseWare.
“Take advantage of MIT’s free digital technologies and tools,” he says. “Keep an open mind as to how the knowledge can be applied.”
