Uncategorized – Page 12

7 July, 201620 May, 2025

Scicomm-unities of Practice

On the 3rd of July, #BrumSciComm will be two years old. We’ve been running socials to support each other and provide a network for those wanting to tell stories of science in different ways. We’ll have news about what we are planning to mark this special occasion.

In the meantime, we’ve been busy. Some of you may have noticed our increased web presence, especially on the Twitter front where we now have an account @BrumSciComm. There is a steadily growing following and you are welcome to join in. We do love our hashtag, and we still use it.

12 April, 201620 May, 2025

Why Big Bang Was Special For Me

Tell you what I loved about the Big Bang Fair this year. Over the four days, not only did approximately 75,0000 kids, teachers and parents grace the NEC exhibition halls, but a good number of stakeholders, presenters and volunteers. Many of these volunteers gave of their time from studies or work, many without costs or expenses. How do we support these ones? Let me tell you what we tried this year.

I was working alongside Sarah Bearchell of Sarah’s Adventures In Science, an Oxford-based, award-winning freelance science communicator who specialises in workshops for schools and community groups. She had reimagined her ‘Mischievous Matter’ workshop to run in a noisy environment with timed groups. There was a large element of getting hands-on with the experience and using all our senses to observe as a scientist.

24 March, 201620 May, 2025

Error 4 – Out of memory

Despite me sharing a visual history of my life on Facebook, the vast majority of people who read this would not have known me when I was at school. I’m sometimes asked what I was like at school and the answer is generally quite dull. I did what every other kid did, which was to keep my head down and keep out of trouble. The best way we could accomplish this was to spend a lot of time in the dark, waggling our joysticks.

While I was introduced to computers in junior school, it was quite limiting. Partly because the hardware in question was a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 and secondly, programming beyond the basics of “Hello World” was beyond the skill set of most teachers.