Schools

Funded by EXDCI-2, EPCC is organising a 2-day workshop in Edinburgh on 8-9 July 2019 to present ideas on how science and engineering can be supported from Raspberry Pis to large scale supercomputers. We are looking to investigate how to introduce these topics to school-age audiences including linking to existing school curricula. This will include examples of existing education materials and activities and looking ahead to current plans.

Regular readers will already know that EPCC was planning to attend New Scientist Live again this year. Despite our concerns about getting to London as Storm Ali bore down on us, we made it, and I’m happy to report we had a very successful and enjoyable trip!

This week I've been taking part in I'm a Scientist, Get me out of here, an online event funded by the Wellcome Trust where high school pupils engage in live chats with scientists from around the UK.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you got older? It can be easy to become blasé about repetitive answers that children can come up with, but how much of that is our fault as adults? Do we provide enough information about the range of possible careers and jobs available?

Prestonfield Primary in Edinburgh has no intention of this by the looks of things, having organised a careers fair for their P1-P6 classes.

Getting young people interested in science, hopefully with a long term view to getting them involved in future science or science-influenced careers, is an important part of doing public outreach. EPCC has being doing this for a little while now, but we are still finding our feet. A lot of our contacts with schools come through personal contacts or connections with children in the school. St Marys Primary, which my eldest niece attends, was keen to have family members of pupils talk about what they do and the subjects they are involved with in a 'Skills for the Future' week. This was a great opportunity to help the school using some of the exhibits we have already got and some new activities being worked on. 

On the 10th of April Lorna Smith, Toni Collis and I spent the morning at Tweedbank Community Centre with a group of 30 pre-school children from the local nursery and playgroup - possibly the youngest group of potential HPC users we have met yet!  As part of the Borders Science Festival, we had offered to run a workshop giving an overview of HPC, kick-start an interest in STEM, and help cover one of their Curriculum for Excellence outcomes: "I can talk about science stories to develop my understanding of the world around me".

This month, Mario, Toni and I took a trip 'doon the water' to Rothesay Academy to introduce some of the concepts of supercomputing to first and second year pupils.

Rothesay is on the Isle of Bute and during the 19th century it was famous for its hydropathic establishments and treatments. Our team had been invited to visit the school as part of National Science and Engineering Week 2014, and we spent the day showing some of the demonstrations developed by EPCC for explaining the basics of supercomputing and its uses. 

The library in Dalkeith was the setting for EPCC 's event at the Midlothian Science Festival, where we hoped to introduce and explain what supercomputers are and why they are needed.