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Hands up if you love science and can't get enough of it? And hands up if "science" and "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) are terms that can induce feelings of anxiety or even panic in you? I hear you! But the weird thing is; some people who find science fascinating can often feel anxious about "not knowing enough" or that they will be "found out" one day ( hello Impostor Syndrome ). And you probably know more than you think you do - even if the word "science" makes you nervous. Here's what you can do. My 3 Top Tips for finding your own Science Comfort Zone; wherever you happen to be! Tip 1: You don't need to know "everything" in science It is literally impossible to know everything in science. Science is constantly moving, evolving, updating. When I was at University the "internet" as we know it now hadn't even been invented and the amount of information in a lecture was limited to how much someone could write on a board in 50 minutes. Now thanks to the Internet we are all drowning in information (at least it often feels that way) so if you have those feelings of anxiety it could be just because there literally is "too much stuff" and we need to refocus, instead of knowing , on what we do with all this information. So just breathe . You don't need to know all of it. Nobody does. Nobody expects you to (and if they do; you don't need to listen as they are asking the impossible)! Once you realise this it all seems a bit less "scary" and a lot more do-able. And sometimes just having a place to find out a bit more and ask questions without pressure or expectation can be just the thing you need. That's what I am trying to build with Dr Dot's Science Community , and you can join it here: I NEED Dr Dot's Science Community! Tip 2: Science Is All Around Us Science is part of our everyday lives. How often do we hear that? And it's true! It's not just "in a lab". And you DEFINITELY know more than you think (even if you've forgotten most of it...).
Introduction It has been a strange few weeks, to say the least. We are all adjusting to our new “normal”. I had intended writing something before now, but distilling the mountains of information (and misinformation) whirling around into something readable and coherent has seemed at times a task difficult to pin down. A good metaphor for this might be something like “trying to pin fog to a wall”. So I am slowly emerging from the fog, and slowly adjusting to the “new normal”. Whatever that is… Paid work for STEM Scotland has come to a temporary halt, understandably so, and I have been thinking how best to contribute to the effort of fighting COVID-19, both socially and scientifically. This is slowly crystallising, so keep watching…the fog is clearing and I will emerge with an update in the coming week or so (this timescale may be elastic...). For now, here is a short piece on some of my thoughts while we are all processing living in the midst of this pandemic.
The love for STEM can start at any age I grew up in the age before the internet, in a rural community on the Isle of Skye. So where did my love for science and my determination to be a scientist come from? The event that may have sparked that interest was a chemistry set that my sister received for Christmas in the late 70s. I was in awe of the fact that you could create your own experiments, with a little methanol burner and goggles, it really was the stuff of science fiction. I also had the good fortune to have inspirational science teachers with enthusiasm for their subject.
Research scientists at universities are under increasing pressure from funding councils and charities to provide evidence of both the impact of their research and their level of public engagement. Fortunately, internet based services and social media provide a perfect platform for such activities if used correctly. YouTube has become the premier vehicle for distribution of videos and animations of research findings. This vast repository has also become an essential learning platform for everyone with internet access. A less well known resource is Sketchfab, a repository of 3D models that can be viewed on any device, and in Virtual Reality (VR) with embedded animations. The 3D objects (assets) can be viewed, downloaded or purchased for animation building, as game assets or 3D printing. The access rights are determined by the model owner – not Sketchfab. Several major museums and universities are now using Sketchfab to display their ‘exhibits’. Glasgow Life Sciences Glasgow Life Sciences (GLS) is a new public engagement and BioAnimation service within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. The purpose of the service is to collect and curate the best of the College of Medical and Veterinary & Life Sciences’ (CMVLS) 3D datasets and process them for inclusion in the GLS Sketchfab collection, which can be viewed here: https://sketchfab.com/GLS
Getting the GIST of video creation Yesterday I was lucky enough to take part in a video creation workshop run jointly by 3 Discovery and The GIST. The GIST (Glasgow Insight into Science & Technology) is an award-winning science magazine, designed and run by students from all three of Glasgow’s universities. Two of my former students are on the Board of GIST and I am absolutely delighted to see them doing so well; Sonya is in the final year of her BHF-funded PhD at Glasgow University, and Katrina in the second year of her PhD at Strathclyde. Scientific writing and Public Engagement have played an increasing part in their careers and interests, so it will be fascinating to see where they go next….but that’s for another blog! The aims of this workshop were to demonstrate the capabilities of the “iMovie” software, and for participants to practice these by creating and editing a short movie of our own; all with a particular focus on the potential of iMovie for use in schools, youth groups and other community settings. Stephen Gruber from 3 was a very engaging and informative presenter, very approachable, and created a hugely effective learning environment (I’m always subconsciously “giving feedback”; I hadn’t realised how naturally I do this until I left my Higher Education job and now I can’t stop! Help!). Stephen described how they have taken the iMovie workshop to 16 libraries so far, many in the East End of Glasgow, and showed us some absolutely lovely clips produced by young people at Springburn Library. Their energy and creativity is amazing; just what we need to be encouraging! The workshop structure was very clear yet flexible. First Stephen introduced the whole idea of using iMovie with schools, many of whom now have ipads, and had some great tips on little things to watch out for when filming (eg don’t cover the microphone; an obvious but easily made mistake). Then small groups got 3mins to come up with an idea/outline, and 15mins to complete their filming. After this, Stephen gave us a demonstration of the editing features. We then had 15mins to edit our footage, ending of course with viewing all our “final” efforts on the big scream (oops screen)! Here’s our group's clip; clearly not a finished/polished version, but, we found it easy to use, quite intuitive, and has a huge potential for enhancing all sorts of science/STEM communication in a variety of settings.
Dr Dot’s Science Club has started a tradition….we end each run of the Club with a Science Fair! So far this year we have ran two full versions of Dr Dot’s Science Club, both at The Glasgow Academy Newlands (TGAN) campus. TGAN is a small school with pupils from P1-P4, and is a branch of the main school at Kelvinbridge. It has been an absolute privilege working with the school, and I owe a huge thanks to the Head of TGAN, Hazel Logie, for offering this amazing opportunity to STEM Scotland. I am delighted to announce that Dr Dot’s Science Club will run again at TGAN after the holidays; not wanting to wish the summer away (let’s hope we get one!) but I am really looking forward to running the Club for a third time here. As a new Company, this repeat business is tremendous validation for us, from trialling the Club to becoming established as a regular. So a huge thanks to TGAN (staff, pupils and parents) and Mr Mathewson (Head of Prep, TGA Kelvinbridge) for putting Hazel and I in touch following her request for a Science/STEM Club. So….Science Fair! Dr Dot’s Science Club held their second Science Fair at TGAN on Wednesday 19th June. Dr Dot (On the Spot!) began by welcoming club members and their guests, and outlining the proceedings, encouraging everyone to take part. Club members assisted most kindly (and got a chance to practice their presentation skills) by holding up display boards.
Introduction Last year I attended the Scotland Policy Conference keynote seminar on “ Next steps for STEM education and training in Scotland: widening participation, improving delivery and meeting the needs of business ” (26 June 2018, Radisson Blu, Edinburgh). This was a hugely stimulating event, and one of the first conferences I attended as a new business owner, coming "fresh" (!) from 15 years in Higher Education. The remainder of this blog is an article I submitted to the conference organisers afterwards, as participants are encouraged to continue the debate/discussion afterwards: I particularly enjoyed speaking to Dr Alison Hennessy about the Growth Mindset, a concept I had not been aware of before this conference. Throughout the morning I realised that Growth Mindset has links to several other key themes in education and STEM, including feedback, creativity and the freedom to make mistakes. There are also some very interesting parallels with research areas such as Appreciative Inquiry, and Threshold Concepts. These connections and links are discussed below, together with references for further information. What is the “Growth Mindset”? A recurring theme throughout the conference was the existence of maths anxiety, and even fear, among staff as well as pupils. The Growth Mindset is a concept that originated at Stanford, with Dr Carol Dweck, around thirty years ago, and sets out that intelligence is not fixed, but can grow. This would mean the commonly-held belief that people are either born “with a maths brain” or without, is in fact a misconception. Studies have shown that with the right type of encouragement, for example praising hard work and effort, children develop a “growth mindset”. Conversely, a “fixed” mindset (you either have or don’t have a “maths brain”) is more likely to result from feedback based on whether a child is “smart” or not. Therefore, finding ways to develop a growth mindset could be tremendously empowering, for both students and staff. Parallels with other concepts and theories Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a way of working, originally to do with change management, that is based on focussing on what can be done, rather than on what the problems are (Mohr & Watkins, 2002). Appreciative Inquiry therefore challenges another theme touched on during the day, the deficit model, which focuses on what is “missing”. Creating a positive and supportive learning environment was also mentioned, so that it is safe to make mistakes, and where pupils are not intimidated but rather encouraged to try again, and to learn from what they did wrong. This attitude brings to mind the notion of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR), a term perhaps most associated with the psychologist Carl Rogers; and that UPR can also simply be called “respect”. If a student is held at all times in UPR by the teacher (ie treated with respect), confidence is likely to improve, risk-taking will increase, and learning has a much greater chance of moving on as a result. Meyer & Land (2003) proposed the idea of “Threshold Concepts”, where certain key concepts can be seen as “threshold”, and until these have been properly understood and dealt with, the student cannot move on with their learning and so remains “stuck”. This moving on (termed “passing through a portal” by Meyer & Land) can be problematic and uncomfortable, where the student has to “deconstruct” previous knowledge before they can see things in a new way. This deconstruction is a transitional state, but is not automatic and requires effort, creativity and support. Conclusion I would therefore propose that the idea of a Growth Mindset (ie that intelligence is not pre-set) is an example of such a Threshold Concept. This means that overcoming maths anxiety requires actively deconstructing the notion of “I can’t do this”, and finding ways to discover what a person can do. As Meyer and Land have outlined, effort and creativity are key. It is also interesting to speculate whether the methods and techniques used in Appreciative Inquiry can help to address maths and science anxiety. In short, we need to “unlock” the potential of both staff and students, in fact all stakeholders, to enhance the growth of STEM in Scotland. References MEYER, J & LAND, R (2003) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (1) – linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In “Improving Student Learning – Ten Years On”. Rust, C. (ed), OCSLD, Oxford. MOHR, B & WATKINS, J (2002) The essentials of Appreciative Inquiry: A roadmap for creating positive futures. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications, Inc. Available at: https://gcatd.org/resources/Documents/Special%20Interest%20Groups%20(SIGs)/Consultants/AI%20article.pdf [Accessed 2nd July 2018] [Note: This article has been previously published in the conference proceedings, along with a transcript of the whole event, as participants are encouraged to continue the debate/discussion afterwards. Proceedings are only available to attendees; however such articles are the property of authors and so freely available for their use. Thanks to Sean Cudmore, Deputy Organiser of the Scotland Policy Conferences, for confirmation of this permission]
As part of my final year dissertation I chose to do a STEM outreach project. I was given 10 weeks to create and complete a physiology-based activity, which engaged the public in science. With public engagement ranging from museum exhibitions, cafes, pubs, nursing homes and shopping centres, the possibilities are endless for creating STEM based activities. In the ASPIRES report by Kings College London, I was shocked to see that the demographic least likely to aspire to a career in science were white females, aged 10-14, with no family members working in STEM industries. As a woman studying science this made me wonder how I ever came to study Physiology, but also inspired me to target my project towards young females in Glasgow with the main aim of dispelling the misconceptions that science is ‘too difficult’ or ‘only for boys’. What I did for my project... I taught over 140 children from various groups including Girl Guides, Scouts and Schools. Participants of the ‘All Systems Go Physiology Workshop’ listened to each other’s heart beats using stethoscopes, performed a reaction time experiment, patellar tendon jerk reflex, blind spot test and Ishihara colour-blindness tests. After doing some research, I discovered how having a ‘gore factor’ can lead to greater recollection of scientific tasks. I displayed a fantastic video of a heart beating ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298puWjGaw8 ) and brought a real sheep’s heart along to the workshops. Results I used an evaluation form to determine the success of the workshop and compare the groups I was working with. The group who performed best were the Girl Guides, which shows that perhaps educating and inspiring young girls to pursue science works much better in an informal learning environment rather than a School, but of course this very much depends on the individual learner. On the evaluation form I asked everyone to draw a picture of a heart. I received some beautiful love heart drawings before the session started, and after the session, generally a big red blob! Here are a few of my favourites...
When I decided to set up STEM Scotland, I produced a huge Mind Map of all the things I could include in the business; a Science Club was just one of them. When an opportunity presented itself to run a Science Club, I threw myself into it, unleashing the creative me. It has been great fun! Even the paperwork in a way, as it is so satisfying to do this for a clearly defined purpose. Resources! Deciding what experiments are suitable for a Science Club depends on a variety of factors. Fun being crucial! Messy is good. Scientific is essential. Using everyday materials is great; cuts down costs, encourages recycling, and helps make it more visible that science is everywhere (I have been stashing takeaway food tubs for months now).. It’s also important to have actual scientific instruments and equipment you may find in a lab, so that pupils/students have exposure to these and hands-on experience of using them. Research! There is a huge amount of material online for science experiments suitable for children; I have spent hours researching, watching YouTube and other clips, partly feeling “guilty” as I was having fun doing this, and taking the time out of my day to do so; I had to keep reminding myself this was work. It was great! My brother reminded me of the legend that is Bill Nye (Science Guy) and from his (Bill’s) video on Bones & Muscles I really loved the few-seconds clip on Dissolving Bones; I will come back to this… An interesting (frustrating?) point to note is that in my searches so far I have come across very few videos with women presenters…I will come back to this too…. Human Communication Never underestimate the power and value of talking to other people; there is so much we can learn from each other, and sometimes I think this gets forgotten in our increasingly online world. Attending the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) at the SEC Glasgow (September 2018) gave me so many ideas, from the excellent presentations, the trade stalls, talking to people in sessions and at coffee breaks, and probably most importantly, the STEM Expo 2018! This was a new feature of SLF, where a large room (Lomond) was set aside for real proper hands-on try-it-out sessions for conference participants. Tables/stalls/floor space was occupied by various groups including several schools (pupils and teachers), organisations such as Institute of Physics (IoP, who were presenting their material on gender equality in science), and STEM Glasgow. The children were absolutely fantastic at not letting anyone (me!) pass by without trying out their experiment/creation. What great salespeople never mind budding scientists! I learned about global warming, plastics in the ocean, how to build and test a helicopter, and how to make a catapult among other exciting things. The whole room was buzzing; the enthusiasm was palpable, and the creativity and potential in that room were inspirational! I took as many examples, leaflets, samples and contact details as I could; this became source material for my Science Club ideas and resources. Perhaps most important though, was the clear knowledge that children do want to do science. We need to help them fulfil that early potential and talent. Experiment Practice (and chickens) Going back to the bones…I set up an experiment in the kitchen with some bones from the Christmas turkey, in test tubes (herb containers) of red wine vinegar, Pepsi (this one fizzed!) and tap water as a control (pictured below). At the same time as carving off the meat to obtain the bones, I also set up a frying pan with onions and korma sauce, into which I stirred the turkey meat (end result also pictured). This is a very important part of the experiment. I am wondering if there would be interest in making a video series… The china chicken (you can just make out a corner of it in the pic below) was a Christmas present. We were not quite sure what to do with it, so it has carved a role for itself as a star in the Science Club preparation and delivery. I then began to wonder; are the properties of bone affected if they are cooked? Maybe I need to use uncooked bones? So I bought an uncooked supermarket chicken; off came the bones (and on went the casserole; I sense a theme developing here). I managed to dissect out the thigh bones, breast bone and rib cage, the latter being particularly challenging but well worth the effort. These bones are now the subject of the first session of Dr Dot’s Science Club, currently resting in vinegar in a box in my garage, and will be reported on at a later date. Risk Assessment and Insurance There are several examples online of Risk Assessments (RAs) for various purposes and contexts; I began with looking at the STEM Ambassador resources and followed links from there. The first step to producing an RA for a Science Club is to actually decide just what experiments you want to do (witness the fun I had researching this!). Making the decision I found was perhaps the hardest part, more so than the actual paperwork. However once I had a clear list, I adapted an online template to produce a grid, starting with the list of experiment titles on the left. Opposite each, I detailed the possible hazards; location; who might be affected; the risk rating; control measures; and finally the risk rating after these measures are taken. I also included for clarity an appendix showing how the risk is calculated. This can all be quite time-consuming; but once produced, your own template/draft can then be adapted/updated as required. I was able to complete mine while on the train down to London for the Pharmacology 2018 conference, which was a most satisfying and very productive use of the journey time (possibly more so than if I had been in the office….)! If running a Science Club, Public Liability Insurance is a good idea; it is not a legal requirement (unlike Employer Liability Insurance), but many organisations can request it or even insist on it, and it makes absolute sense to just have this from the beginning even if it is not required officially. Some companies do not offer Public Liability Insurance for a Science Club and refer you on to a more specialised broker so leave plenty of time to shop around, particularly as there can be quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with underwriters before giving a quote. Timing and Logistics How many children there are (can you set upper or lower limits?); ages/stages; whether people work in pairs, groups or individually; whether you have any assistance....how best to allocate/divide up equipment; what's the optimum number of set-ups to provide; are there occasions where a demo would be better; how many eyes in the back of your head you have...these all require careful consideration. And be prepared to revise as you go. It goes without saying that planning is absolutely essential, but don't be afraid to completely change or adapt procedures. It could be argued that for a successful well-run Science Club, organisation is just as important as the science (perhaps even more so). The Bare Bones So there it is; the Anatomy of a Science Club. To be continued…or evolved….!
