One of the long term goals of our projects is to reach more schools traditionally under-served by STEM outreach activities.
The Aspires project, from King’s College London has shown that science capital is a key factor in terms of students aspiring to science and STEM careers. Science capital refers to knowledge about science and how it works, interest, understanding, and contacts (knowing somebody who works in science). Continue reading
After every event we ask the winning scientists to write a short blog to be sent to all the students in who took part in the zone. It’s a great way for the scientists to reflect on the previous two weeks and thank all the students for voting for them.
Let’s take a look at what the November Winners had to say…
As part of this year’s activity we are running a non-school zone similar to our Learning Zone – just with farmers instead of teachers.
In the I’m a Scientist Ireland project pilot in 2012 we ran three zones, since then we have run four zones every year.
While we were under capacity in the pilot, the demand for the activity from teachers has remained relatively consistent and looks to be increasing.
After every event we ask the zone winners to write a short blog post to be sent to all the students in who took part in the zone. It’s a great way for the scientists to reflect on the previous two weeks and thank all the students for voting for them.
Let’s take a look the winners from I’m a Scientist Ireland 2015 had to say…
In November 2014 we ran I’m a Scientist in Ireland for the third time, and we run our first I’m an Engineer event in Ireland.
We ran four I’m a Scientist and two I’m an Engineer zones. Two of the I’m a Scientist zones were themed (Evolution and Sustainability) and two of them were general (Boron and Beryllium).
One of the I’m an Engineer zones was themed (Energy) and the other one was general (Kelvin).
The funding for this project comes in part from the Science Foundation Ireland and the other half comes from elsewhere. We’ve got funding from the Wellcome Trust, the European Society for Evolutionary Biology and the Royal Society for Chemistry.
Traditionally we try to get a zone funded by large company employing lots of scientists and engineers. A company whose business relies on a science friendly population and education system. Traditionally we get nowhere.
Paul won the Space Zone in November 2012, find out how he spent his winnings:
I participated in the Space Zone of the 2012 Irish I’m A Scientist contest while finishing off my PhD. I was both surprised and elated to win it!
I then defended my thesis, got married, and moved to California…whew. Finally, this summer I was granted a bit of free time to kick off my ‘dream’ project: SolarSurfer.org. My proposal is to build an interactive, story-driven, educational website to help bring astronomy and space concepts into the Irish class room.
I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here is an online activity where school students get to meet and interact with scientists.
It’s a competition between scientists, where the students are the judges.
Students challenge the scientists over intense, online Chats. Then they Ask follow up questions to all the Scientists, and Vote for their favourite scientist to win a prize of €500 to communicate their work with the public.
