Now in its ninth year, Glasgow Science Festival (4-14th June) is back with a fresh batch of exciting events to inspire and intrigue young minds!
All school events are FREE and cover a variety of subjects, from microbiology and forensic science to physics and engineering. Places are available for pupils in Primary 3 through to S6.
Our public programme also offers a range of fun activities for school-age children and families, including Science Sunday at the University of Glasgow, the Strathclyde Science Special and a weekend of hands-on science at at Kelvingrove.
Holidaying in Ibiza or even backpacking across Europe was not an option last summer for four inspirational undergraduate students from all across Scotland, who spurned the ordinary and instead single-handedly organised an extraordinary trip to the Arctic.
The main purpose of the trip was to study how climate change is affecting the landscape and the people of the Arctic.
Team leader, Cameron MacKay, was motivated to go on the trip due to his strong interest in climate change. To record the effects of climate change they used camera drones, art and social research. They responded to what they saw through creating music and art work.
To hear more from Cameron and the rest of his team tune in to our Glow meet on Wednesday 27th May, 10.45 – 11.45. They will be showing footage of the trip and answering your questions.
Take a look beforehand on Education Scotland’s Weather and Climate Change page http://bit.ly/WeatherandClimateChange Click on Climate Change then Climate Change in Greenland.
This Glow meet is aimed at upper primary and lower secondary.
Throughout the last term Dundee Science Centre’s STEM Learning Team have visited 10 secondary schools across Dundee, Fife, Perth and Kinross and Angus with Dr Stephen Watt of the Jacqui Wood Cancer Centre, University of Dundee. The team took groups of senior phase learners through an electrophoresis workshop developed to suit Unit 1 of the new CfE Higher Human Biology course.
The context was skin cancer, and the workshop had three distinct strands. Stephen had some DNA samples of a particular oncogene which the pupils had to prepare for loading, load into the gels, and then analyse the gels to determine which samples were healthy skin and which were cancerous.
Whilst the gels ran, they had the opportunity to study healthy and cancerous skin tissue through microscopes, identifying key features of each. There was also time for the pupils to speak to Stephen, to ask questions about skin cancer and what it is like to be a research scientist.
The groups then went through a data analysis task to see which type of cancer treatment is most effective – chemotherapy or targeted treatments.
The workshop provided an excellent opportunity for young people to learn from a professional scientist about world leading research.
Here’s what teachers said:
“It fitted in well to the Higher Human course”
“Pupils really enjoyed the workshop”
“An absolutely fantastic workshop, thank you!”
“I would personally love it if you were able to come out again when we are teaching CfE Higher Human next year!”
Dundee Science Centre hopes to be able to offer this experience again in the future. If you’d be interested to find out more, get in touch by e-mailing learning@dundeesciencecentre.org.uk
This year’s Institute of Physics Stirling Meeting will take place at the Stirling Court Hotel (formerly known as the Management Centre) on Wednesday 20th May. Full details, including the programme and the online registration system are available at www.stirlingmeeting.org
Registration deadline is 15th May.
Once again SSERC will be distributing free a valuable educational resource to all delegates who are currently teaching in schools.
This infographic into the realm of biochemistry, with a look at the chemical structure of DNA, and its role in creating proteins in our cells. Of course, it’s not just in humans that DNA is found – it’s present in the cells of every multicellular life form on Earth. This graphic provides an overview of its common structure across these life forms, and a brief explanation of how it allows proteins to be generated.
To download your own copy of the infographic and for further information, click on this link to Compound Interest.
MARSBalloon is a free project open to all UK schools that launches student Mars science experiments on high altitude balloons 30km up into Earth’s atmosphere.
At this altitude the conditions of gas pressure, temperature and radiation are very similar to the surface of Mars; making it an ideal testing ground for trying out anything that humans or robots might be doing on Mars in the future.
Teachers can register now for our next flight where we plan to launch up to 100 student experiments; each of which should fit into a kinder egg toy capsule. After the flight the experiment capsules will be returned to the schools for analysis by the students.
This project can be run within a variety of STEM subject lessons or after school clubs and taking part will help your students to:
learn more about the environment of Mars and its future exploration
work as a group to formulate, design, build and analyse the results of a real Mars science experiment
consider careers in UK space and other STEM industries.
This project is run by space engineers from Thales Alenia Space UK and funded by Thales UK for the purpose of engaging more students into high tech engineering and ground-breaking science.
There is no cost to take part in the project other than that of experiment materials and postage. Teachers can find out more and register their class or club for free at www.marsballoon.com
The ENTHUSE Partnership Awards are a grant of £12,000 for groups of between four and eight primary schools wishing to work together to address local issues of underachievement in science/STEM subjects.
The ENTHUSE Partnership Award aims to support collaborative activities over two years to develop and strengthen local partnerships which can subsequently continue independently. New schools wishing to apply to become an ENTHUSE Partnership, which will commence in September 2015 should show an expression of interest
To receive an expression of interest form for completion, please email award-entry@slcs.ac.uk. Completed expression of interest forms need to be received by 4pm,Thursday 30 April 2015. Initial expressions of interest need to be submitted toaward-entry@slcs.ac.uk for the attention of Eleanor Malcolmson.
Following the publication of its 3-18 Curriculum Impact Report for Sciences in September 2012, Education Scotland organised a series of conversation days where priorities for action to secure improvements in science education nationally were identified.
Key aspects for development emerged which included:
support with the initial planning for learning and teaching in the sciences
guidance in and exemplification for assessment in the sciences
support for the delivery of topical science
To address each aspect the sciences team hosted three Glow Meets, each complimented by a series of professional learning twilight sessions delivered throughout Scotland.
Each Meet and twilight event has been very successful and to continue supporting practitioners we have uploaded the Glow Meets and power point presentations onto the Primary and Early years Glow 365 site.
Edinburgh International Science Festival are thrilled to be running a ‘Sci-Ku’ (science haiku) writing competition! There are 3 categories of the competition: primary school, secondary school and open to the public. To supplement the competition, Edinburgh International Science Festival have created 2 teaching packs for primary and secondary schools, to help teachers take advantage of this competition during British Science Week and explore science in a creative way. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/sci-ku-competition
Glasgow Science Festival . . . Schools Programme
