Although I think that this age group is really improtant it is the only age group in which I do not currently do any STEM work, although it is a possibility for the future.
I am currently developing a game for STEM activities, in which the players would be controlling their own city, with the players having to make decision every round to see what to do next.
The decisions would be: would you like to spend £20, 000 on a wind farm that would generate 10kW of energy or a petrol based power station for £10, 000 that would generate the same amounts? Ofc, after each round I would be explaining the repercussions of each decision, both financially and environmentally, while at the same time there is no wrong or right answer, so no matter what happens, the students can enjoy the game without having the possibility of losing (okay, there are outcomes that are better then others, but still, no outcome would end up with the extinction of the human population from Earth).
Such game can be adapted for this particular age group.
I would love to. There are some STEM groups at Uni already that I am involved with so I’d adapt some of the work they do to the students in my group. I’d like to hold activity sessions so that the students can try out the reactions they are learning about in class. I always found it really tough to learn about chemistry by reading. The best way I learned was by trying out the reactions myself!
I would possibly contact the Royal Society of Chemistry and ask advice about how to start such a group, plan activities and create a good interactive environment
This is a really interesting idea. I would love to work with a local school to start this, and I would probably do it by encouraging our undergraduate students to get involved as ‘mentors’
I’d definitely get talking to local schools – ideally I’d want to be able to host it somewhere that was convenient for students to get to as it’s a lot easier to be motivated to turn up to things when it’s less effort. The Royal Society of Chemistry and STEM ambassador scheme also have some great practicals and equipment to take into schools in order to be able to give people more hands on experience too.
Not only does is game sound like a good idea, it would be easily possible to do via cheaper/free software such as PowerPoint. Also, on the topic of STEM activities, do you use a Raspberry Pi in any of your work, such as to monitor slow reaction like change in colour, infra red or temperature?
Unfortunately I have not had the occasion to use a Raspberry Pi in the lab, and although it might be very useful, there are other equipments in the lab that can be used to monitor the reaction.
With regards to the game it will be designed for power point, but then I would rather have a professional web site developer work on it and have it online for everyone to have access to it without the possibility of anyone amending the power point.
@Joe – this summer I bought a stack of RPi and Arduino processors, and gave them out to some of our molecular physics students just to see what they could do with them. As a result, we have our first year students now building spectrometers using LEGO, a light-emitting diode and a photodiode detector to measure the light, all controlled with a RPi 🙂
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Joe commented on :
Not only does is game sound like a good idea, it would be easily possible to do via cheaper/free software such as PowerPoint. Also, on the topic of STEM activities, do you use a Raspberry Pi in any of your work, such as to monitor slow reaction like change in colour, infra red or temperature?
Matthew commented on :
Unfortunately I have not had the occasion to use a Raspberry Pi in the lab, and although it might be very useful, there are other equipments in the lab that can be used to monitor the reaction.
With regards to the game it will be designed for power point, but then I would rather have a professional web site developer work on it and have it online for everyone to have access to it without the possibility of anyone amending the power point.
Andrew commented on :
@Joe – this summer I bought a stack of RPi and Arduino processors, and gave them out to some of our molecular physics students just to see what they could do with them. As a result, we have our first year students now building spectrometers using LEGO, a light-emitting diode and a photodiode detector to measure the light, all controlled with a RPi 🙂