Tag Archive for: secondary

NEW Research Project launched

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At the ASE conference last week, we launched our new research project called

Supporting career-related learning in classrooms using STEM Person of the Week.

 

We are now looking for teachers and schools to take part in the research project and try out the NUSTEM STEM Person of the Week (SPOTW) resources. Teachers can work in primary or secondary schools anywhere in the UK.

What are the possible benefits of taking part?

Each school will recieve a free set of printed SPOTW posters for each class or teacher taking part, and a powerpoint presentation to support the use of the posters.  Using the resources will help teachers to talk about careers with pupils, and link this to their science lessons.  Pupils will know more about some STEM jobs and the attributes they might need to work in those STEM jobs.

What will you do?

Teachers that take part in the research will complete an online survey about careers learning at the start of the project.  There will be a short webinar to explain a little bit more about the research and the resource at the beginning of March and then between 25th March and 14th June teachers will use the posters as part of their teaching and learning activities.  At the end of this, there will be a second online survey and, for some teachers, a short interview with Carol.

How to find out more?

Complete this Expression of Interest form by 31st January 2024.  After this deadline, Carol will contact you and let you know more details.

Can parents help ‘nudge’ students into choosing STEM A-levels?

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When young people are asked who has provided them with careers advice and guidance, the most common answer is ‘parents and family’, followed by ‘teachers’.

The Behavioural Insights Team (sometimes known as the Nudge Unit) apply behavioural economics and psychology to understand the choices that people make, and help people make sensible choices.  They often run research trials which test out different interventions to see which is the most effective. They have worked with the Department for Education, National Health Service, with HMRC, with local councils, police forces, and many other organisations.

Now the team are looking to see if parents and teachers can help encourage their girls to choose STEM A-levels, and need secondary schools to sign up to be part of the trial.

The two interventions include:

  • Sharing a website with parents that provides information about the usefulness of STEM and guidance on how to talk to their child about A-level subject choices
  • Short classroom based activities targeted at students to overcome the perception that STEM is not ‘for them’

Both of these interventions link closely to what NUSTEM is doing in the North East, so we’re really interested to see the results of the trial.

If your school would like to get involved, there are more details in this pdf, and you can contact Kathryn or Jessica at the Behavioural Insights Team.

Kathryn.Atherton@bi.team  or Jessica.Hunt@bi.team

Why not Physics?

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Last month, the Institute of Physics released a report called ‘Why not Physics?‘

The report looked at how many students studied A-level science subjects in different schools in 2016. The good news is that the picture is a little bit better than when the IOP did a similar analysis 4 years ago.

The bad news is that there are still 44% of schools that don’t send any girls to study A-level Physics*.

As well as looking at the number of students who study physics in different types of schools, the report looks at how well students do in their GCSEs in different subjects, and how that affects their choice of A-levels.

“More girls achieve high grades in GCSE physics than boys, and girls generally outperform boys across the board at GCSE.  However, a smaller proportion of girls have physics in their top four subjects at GCSE (65% for girls compared to 81% for boys). When a student does have physics in their top four results, boys are three times more likely to progress to A-level physics than girls.” pg.18

So, on average, girls tend to be doing well in all of their GCSEs, which means that even though they get a good grade in Physics, they also get good grades in their other subjects, which makes physics less likely to be in their top four subjects.

How do GCSE grades influence what subjects a student chooses at A-level? You might think that students will be more likely choose to study A-levels in subjects that they did well in at GCSE.

You can see in Figure 12 from the report that students are much more likely to study a science A-level if the respective GCSE was in their top 4 results at GCSE.

But what happened if a science was not in a student’s top four subjects.

There is no reason why students have to choose A-levels in subjects that were in their top GCSEs. In fact, there are good reasons relating to progression to university or employment, or simply enjoyment, that mean a student might choose to study an A-level that isn’t in their top 4 GCSEs.

Looking at the graph, boys tend to progress to a science subject that was not in their top 4 at about the same rate regardless of whether it was biology, chemistry or physics.

But wait … Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Read that again.

Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Why should this be? Why biology? Why not physics? 

One of the recomendations of the IOP report is that:

Schools should provide effective careers guidance that starts at an early stage, focuses on the next educational phase, emphasises the benefit of choosing certain subject combinations to allow progression to a wide variety of opportunities, and actively challenges gender stereotypes and unconscious biases. pg.8

Here at NUSTEM we are working with North East schools to tackle unconscious bias, and minimise its effects on students.  We offer CPD on unconscious bias for teachers, as well as for those who are involved in advising students about A-level and career choice.

If you would be interested in having NUSTEM work with your school on unconscious bias, then get in touch.

 

*This slightly weird definition means that we can also look at schools which don’t have a sixth form, and track where their pupils go.

International Women in Engineering Day 2017

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Today (23rd June) is International Women in Engineering Day.

Across social media, companies and organisations are tweeting and posting to show their support for women in engineering.

Tweets which show employees looking happy, often standing in front of large equipment!

Here at NUSTEM, we think that it’s really important to show the diversity of the engineering profession along with other STEM careers.

American activist Marian Wright Edelman said

‘You can’t be what you don’t see’

It’s not having role models exactly, but thinking that if someone else, who is like you, can be in a career, then so can you.  We hear parents tell their children ‘You’re just like your Aunty, she’s very good with numbers.  Perhaps you could be an accountant like her’ or words to that effect.

We believe that it’s important that children and young people see ‘people like them’ in a range of careers.

In school, one of the most common sources of information when students are ‘researching’ is wikipedia.  And wikipedia is a good starting point.  But what if students want to find out about women who work in science or engineering.  How good is wikipedia then?

Sadly, it’s not great.  Only 15.5% of Wikipedia articles on people are about women. So when students look for information about people in science and engineering, they’ll get a skewed viewpoint.

Here at NUSTEM we’ve teamed up with Dr Jess Wade from Imperial College and Dr Alice White, resident wikipedian at Wellcome Trust to change this imbalance on wikipedia.

On 25th July we will be hosting a day-long wikipedia Hackathon for girls aged 14 – 18 in the North East.  Girls will find out how to judge the reliability of a source, when and where to reference and how to edit wikipedia to create their own content.  They’ll then edit or create wikipedia pages with information about some of the great women who are working in science.

If you’re interested in joining us, and are aged 14-18, then please sign up on our eventbrite page.

And if you’re looking for more images and stories about women in engineering then follow the hashtag #IWED on twitter.

(Raspberry) Pioneers, Bright Ideas: opportunities for secondary students

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The lovely people at the Raspberry Pi Foundation – the folks who spend the money made from selling all those zillions of credit-card sized computers – have launched their programme for 12-15 year-olds, Pioneers. The idea is: a group of friends gets together, they find a mentor (an adult who can help them along, and also sign things on their behalf), then they take part in a mass group challenge. There’s a fresh challenge every three months, and the first one’s just been announced; see the film above for details, but the basic idea is, “Use technology to make us laugh.”

There are prizes for the best japes, hence there’s a submission deadline of 22nd March 2017. The plan is also that the challenges produce starting points and examples for a huge range of projects, all using digital technology, so everyone can learn from everybody else. Or something like that.

Interested? There are more details at the Pioneers web page, along with links to register a team, information for mentors, suggestions for starting points, and so on.

We’ve been waiting keenly to see what the Pi Foundation ‘do’ at secondary to follow on from their Code Club offer for primary ages, and we look forward to seeing how Pioneers develops. We’re particularly looking forward to laughing at some of the creations from this first challenge.

Shell Bright Ideas Challenge

Meanwhile, if you’re after a more traditional sort of competition, Shell UK are again running their Bright Ideas Challenge. Unsurprisingly, their challenges are based around energy. Here’s the glossy introductory film:

There are a range of ‘what-if…?’ future technology challenges, along with resources for participants and teachers and further films to introduce each of the challenges, on the project website. Submissions are due by 21st April 2017.

Here at Think Physics orbiting world headquarters we have mixed feelings about competitions for secondary students. They certainly can be of value to students, but there are so many of them it’s hard to know which are worth investing time in. In this case, project resources look comprehensive and well-presented, so it should be straightforward to take a look and see if Bright Ideas seems a good fit for you and your students.

If your school took part in Bright Ideas last year, leave a comment below or drop us a line to let us know how it went, and whether you’d do it again.

Work with us! Ogden Science Officer vacancy with the Think Physics team

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We’re recruiting!

If you’re of a physics sort of persuasion (other physical sciences count!), can hold your own in a careers discussion, and look at the prospect of writing and delivering workshops for secondary students and think “Bring it on!” – take a look at our job advert.

Full job description, person specification, application forms, and contact details for further information are at that link.

New competition for secondaries: Microsoft STEM Student Challenge

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I know, I know – the education world is awash with competitions. Stick with it, this one’s a little different and it looks like it could be genuinely fun… and also smart.

Microsoft Research in Cambridge are running a competition which builds on students’ knowledge of STEM subjects, but also on their research skills and particularly their imaginations. The challenge goes:

  1. Pick one of these themes:
    1. Artificial intelligence and virtual reality
    2. Data security
    3. Healthcare
  2. Now come up with an original technology idea which you think could exist in that field in 20 years’ time.
  3. Make a short film which showcases your idea.
  4. Submit the film.

Prizes and the experience for finalists look good, and there’s a clear information pack available at the challenge website. The competition’s open to teams of 4-6 students, in years 8-10.

What I like about this particular competition is that the central conceit is both accessible and clever. We all dream about what the future might bring, this is simply asking you to commit to (and describe) a specific vision. In doing so, you’ll have take what you know about STEM subjects and extrapolate that thinking twenty years into the future. This isn’t some well-intentioned-but-ham-fisted attempt to ‘make science relevant to our everyday lives,’ it’s an invitation to students to find the relevance for themselves. That’s clever.

Also, I’m a sucker for a schools’ STEM film competition.

The only thing I find a little surprising is that there’s no category for primary-age entrants. A pity for them, but also for the judges, who’ll miss out on genius like this. Ah well, maybe next year?

Anyway – secondaries: get your cameras out, sharpen your pencils, brush up on your tech skills and prop-making, and show us how the world’s going to be in 2037. Registration deadline is 8th December, with entries due by 10th February 2017.

 Microsoft STEM Student Challenge website.

Ooh, one last bit of advice: with our Technology Wishing Well we’ve collected about 800 wishes for future tech, from Maker Faire UK and Big Bang North-East. We haven’t yet done a proper analysis, but as a quick hint: lots of people want a flying robot dog which does their homework and tidies their room. Which would indeed be awesome, but you might not be the only entrants to suggest such a thing to this competition.

 

Teacher Subject Specialism Training: Secondary Physics

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In an attempt to address the shortage of secondary physics teachers, the Department for Education is backing training to support non-physics-specialist teachers (or teachers wishing to return to the profession) in making the transition. A range of training opportunities are available, primarily courses with multiple sessions through the school year from October 2015.

In the North-East, such courses are being offered by George Stephenson High School in Newcastle, The Academy at Shotton Hall, Peterlee (PDF link), The Hermitage Academy in Chester-Le-Street (PDF link), and Carmel College in Darlington (PDF link). We’ve added the first session in the George Stephenson course to our events calendar primarily because we’re hosting it here at Think Lab, but do explore the different opportunities available.

Also be sure to follow the link to the Government page about the scheme. The downloadable training directory there is a bit buggy for me this afternoon, but there appear to be even more opportunities in the North-East than those we highlight above. There are also multiple courses for Maths specialism.

 

 

Sci-Pop. Think Physics visits North Shields

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Think Physics had a great day at the Beacon Centre in North Shields for our very first pop-up shop, Sci-Pop.

Over 200 people attended our family science activities, and had a great time learning about sound by making  ‘noisy lollies’, wind by making Think Physics windmills, and electricity by making their own light up circuit cards. We were also talking about body heat and taking infrared selfies, talking about engineering on our marble-bounce activity and getting up close with biology with our giant 3D bug pictures.

See what we got up to:

 

Explore your Universe Family Show

70 children and their grown-ups attended our Explore your Universe Family Show – a science spectacular from atoms to astrophysics. We learnt about the eclipse, plasma, how light travels, static electricity and how to make your hair stand on end. We even took a look at some meteorites which are 4.6 billion years old!

“I maybe would have liked science if it had been like this at school” Parent

Think Physics will be delivering Explore your Universe shows around the North East, so if you would like to request a show please email think.physics@northumbria.ac.uk.

Design a Planet Competition Winners

We ran a drawing competition during the day, and asked entrants to design a planet that would be suitable for life. We had some amazing entries, which made it very difficult to narrow down our favourites. The winning entries are from Dylan, Madeline and Arenus. Each of you will receive a gyroscope.

 

Thanks to everyone who came along to Sci-pop. We hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks especially to the Beacon Centre for hosting us, and in helping create such a successful event.

 

 

 

Future Opportunities: Atom Bank creating new jobs

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Atom Bank is a new company which hopes to open as a bank in October 2015, and aims to employ 450 employees over the next five years. Located in Durham, Atom Bank describes itself as “designed for digital” and wants to offer the customer a new, innovative experience in banking, for those who engage with new ideas and new technologies.

Teachers: this is a great example to share with pupils to highlight career possibilities within the financial sector, which combine banking with digital and business roles.  In Atom bank, and companies like it, there will be careers in:

  • People and customer experience
  • Technology
  • Marketing and propositions
  • Finance and risk
  • Operations
  • Business

Job titles include: marketing, business analysts, solutions architects, technical architects, credit risk manager and financial crime (though we think that means preventing crime, not carrying it out).

Post 16 subject choices: Combinations of Maths, Computer Science,  Physics, Further Maths, Business Studies, and ICT will be useful for students aiming for careers in this sector.

Website: www.atombank.co.uk

Twitter: @atom_bank

Tag Archive for: secondary

Tag Archive for: secondary

Tag Archive for: secondary

Rollercoaster physics – 15th March 2016

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Did your golf ball loop the loop, or did it crash and bounce?

This afternoon we looked briefly at some of the careers involved in designing rollercoasters, built our own test track, and used data loggers to measure how fast the ball was travelling as it went round the roller coaster.

For more information about rollercoasters, and a couple of fun rollercoaster games, have a look at our rollercoaster page.

 

15th March – Wind Turbine Engineering

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Siemens turbine.fwWell, did your turbine work? Did you manage to get the mass up to the table, or were you left with a knotted bundle of string? Did your turbine purr like a renewable energy generating masterpiece, or did all the blades fall off?

It doesn’t matter either way as long as you didn’t give up: figure out what went wrong and keep trying to fix the problem. As a wise old person once said, “An effective wind turbine was never created by someone who gave up at the first sign of difficulty, like for example the axle being bent.” Isn’t amazing how there’s a wise old saying for almost every eventuality!

 

Check out more about wind turbines (including a a virtual tour of an offshore wind farm which is awesome) and about careers in the renewable energy sector on our wind turbines activity page.

12th January: Atoms to Astrophysics

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What a great way to start the year; exploring the universe from the incredibly tiny to the unbelievably large. You can find out more about very tiny or very large things using this The Scale of the Universe  animation. I could spend all day zooming in and out. We talked about protons, neutrons and electrons today, but we didn’t mention the even smaller particles that they are made of. Have an explore. Did you spot the transistor gate that’s about the size of a virus? These are what give your phone its processing power. Current transistors are as small as 7nm – that’s 0.000007mm. The smaller they are, the more we can pack onto a microchip and the more processing power we can get. However, it looks like we might struggle to make them any smaller. As we get smaller we enter the realms of “quantum tunneling” which can cause all sorts of problems. To prevent this, we may have to start making our chips out of something other than silicon. (I like mine made out of potato!  ba-dum-tish!)

One option might be a new material invented in Manchester called Graphene. It is only a single atom thick and could be used to make even smaller transistors. It’s super light and super strong and is changing the way we design and construct new products. If you want to get a glimpse of the material of the future, look here.

 

We also looked at the International Space Station, which you can watch, live, here. If you want to see the ISS fly overhead, use the tracker website here. You can give Tim a wave, and if you tweet him first (@astro_timpeake), he might just wave back!

6th January: Explore your Universe

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Happy New Year, Kenton! What a great way to start the year; exploring the universe from the incredibly tiny to the unbelievably large. You can find out more about very tiny or very large things using this The Scale of the Universe  animation. I could spend all day zooming in and out. We talked about protons, neutrons and electrons today, but we didn’t mention the even smaller particles that they are made of. Have an explore. Did you spot the transistor gate that’s about the size of a virus? These are what give your phone its processing power. Current transistors are as small as 7nm – that’s 0.000007mm. The smaller they are, the more we can pack onto a microchip and the more processing power we can get. However, it looks like we might struggle to make them any smaller. As we get smaller we enter the realms of “quantum tunneling” which can cause all sorts of problems. To prevent this, we may have to start making our chips out of something other than silicon. (I like mine made out of potato!  ba-dum-tish!)

One option might be a new material invented in Manchester called Graphene. It is only a single atom thick and could be used to make even smaller transistors. It’s super light and super strong and is changing the way we design and construct new products. If you want to get a glimpse of the material of the future, look here.

 

We also looked at the International Space Station, which you can watch, live, here. If you want to see the ISS fly overhead, use the tracker website here. You can give Tim a wave, and if you tweet him first (@astro_timpeake), he might just wave back!

 

9th December: Atoms to Astrophysics

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This afternoon I visited St Mary’s to take part in their after school science club. We explored the whole scope of Physics, from atoms to astrophysics. For more information check out our workshop page here, and make sure you have a go with this scale of the universe tool. I could spend all day playing around with it.

A slightly older version can be seen below. Don’t be frightened by the outdated fashions and wonderful 1970s music (by Elmer Bernstein, no less!); this video is a beautiful journey through our universe. Just don’t forget, our understanding has moved on since Charles and Ray Eames made this video in 1977.

9th December: More Rollercoasters

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This morning, I was back at Kenton for some more K’nex rollercoaster building. There’s a lot that goes into building a rollercoaster, and we only just scratched the surface. For more details, head over to our workshop notes page where you’ll find videos, games, and more information than you can shake a (K’nex) stick at. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have six rollercoasters to dismantle and put back into the correct boxes. Sigh.

4th December: Rollercoasters

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How many people does it take to build a rollercoaster? It’s no joke; today we looked at the range of specialists needed to design and construct a rollercoaster, all so that you can get your fix of adrenalin at the local theme park.

I’ve written up some more information on our roller coasters activity page, with a few videos that are worth watching and links to some design-your-own games.

19th November: Space Maths

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Today, Carol and James were back at Heworth Grange for more Space Maths. We looked at the size and scale of our solar system (using sprinkles, no less), and got up close and personal with some meteorites.

Find some more information on our space maths workshop page and make sure you check out the link to the “tediously accurate scale model of the solar system”. Seriously, you won’t regret it.

18 November: Medical Physics

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This morning James visited Year 11 at Heworth Grange to run a Medical Physics workshop. There’s lots more to explore on the subject on our medical physics activity page.

As part of the workshop, James discussed lots of different possible careers in medicine – not just doctors and nurses. There are some good examples of people working in the field at the activity page, or you might like the Step into the NHS website, which has lots of information about roles in the NHS. There’s even a quick quiz which will suggest possible careers for you. Here are my results:

NHS Stepup

Is this what I should really be doing?

Year 8 STEM Assembly 30th April

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It was lovely to meet year 8 this morning and introduce the Think Physics project and STEM careers.  We’re looking forward to working with Cramlington Learning Village over the next couple of years and sharing the fantastic reasons to consider a future in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).  We’ll be running activities for all the different year groups.

This morning in assembly we played ‘I’m a STEM Pupil, Get me out of here’.  Everyone got involved with working out the answers, and the volunteers were excellent!

We found out that STEM is interesting, challenging and shapes the world around us.  We saw that the skills developed while studying STEM will be in high demand in the future, and that there are companies here in the North East which offer great career possibilities.

Next year students will choose GCSE subjects as part of year 9 choices.  Some STEM subject choices are compulsory (Science and Mathematics).  However, it is worth considering additional STEM subjects such as computer science or Design and Technology.

Here is a copy of the ‘5 Reasons to choose STEM’ postcard that we gave out during the assembly. Choose a future in STEM Postcard 

See you all soon!

Emma