GeoScience Outreach gets active on social media

The 2016-17 GeoScience Outreach and Engagement class is getting active on social media after our social media workshop this week.  We have set up our new twitter account and brainstormed how we can reach the widest possible audiences for our outreach projects.

Our next goals are to revamp this website and develop more web-based content across our outreach projects.

Some of our twitter goals might be a bit ambitious – will the first minister of Scotland like a GeoScience Outreach tweet???  Only time will tell.

Watching red squirrels

Calum Bachell’s red squirrel hide interpretive sign project is featured on Scotland’s National Nature Reserves website.  Watching red squirrels: A new red squirrel viewing hide for Morton Lochs

The benefits of interdisciplinary learning

An article by course coordinator Colin Graham on the benefits of interdisciplinary learning in the new Scottish Curriculum for Excellence was published today in the Scotsman.

Weather Challenge with Girlguiding Scotland

A 2013 GeoScience Outreach project by Becky Coats is featured on the University of Edinburgh website!  This hands-on challenge with activities such as making and using a thermometer, a rain gauge and a device to calculate wind speed will allow guides to work towards attaining a new badge on the theme of weather.
Guides go for weather challenge

InTREEgue – youtube videos all about trees

Archie Crofton has posted a series of YouTube videos under the title “InTREEgue” for a general public audience to teach about the wonders of trees.  His self-produced, filmed and edited videos use a mixture of animation, interviews and images to convey the science behind topics such as deforestation and the natural history of the Hawthorne tree.
InTREEgue Channel
Deforestation Part 1: Where have all the trees gone?
Deforestation part 2: Why do we cut down trees?
What do we know about trees?

Mini science conference

The mini science conference at Mauricewood Primary School in Penicuik on the 20th of March 2014 was a huge success! Students presented their experiments on plants to assembled students, teachers and scientists from the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh (organized by Emily Parker and Leah Farquharson).  At least half of the 60 or so primary 5 students put up their hands enthusiastically at the end indicating that they thought science was cool and that they wanted to be scientists one day!
Biosphere project – Emily Parker
Climate change and photosynthesis – Leah Farquharson