Ambassador Case Study April 2010

April 2010 – The Sea – Making Scotland Healthier, Greener and Wealthier

STEM Ambassadors:

Adrian MacLeod, Andrew Olivier, Anuschka Miller, Arlene Rowan, Avril Anderson, Cara Ezzi, Carole Shellcock, Caroline Carter, Debra Brennan, Helen McNeill, Ian Rae, Joanne Field, Joyce Moore, Katie McFarlane-Slack, Kim Last, Lars Brunner, Lisa Eckford-Soper, Polly Crooks, Raeanne Miller, Sarah Cresswell, Sophie James, Zalina Dzhatieva. 

 

Staff and Students from SAMS:

Vicki Last, Ruth Brennan, Karen Alexander, Kyla Orr, Elaine Mitchell, Jill McColl

 

The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS)  is co-ordinating a 10-day Festival of the Sea around the Oban area from 21st – 31st May 2010. The festival aims to enthuse the local community about the sea, further their knowledge and understanding of this gigantic environment and to encourage pride in and stewardship for our local sea lochs and coastal areas. We want to involve as many community groups as possible and attract both local and tourist audiences. We hope that the festival will become an annual event that is supported and funded by the Scottish Government, Leader and SAMS.

 

We particularly wanted to involve the primary aged pupils in the local area and so developed a school package that all local schools were invited to take part in. This package was put together with the help of the festival’s education community, which includes head teachers from Park, Lochnell and St Columba Primary schools. The workshops that staff at SAMS and STEM Ambassadors have developed fit well into the new Curriculum for Excellence.

 

Schools that opted in focussed on the sea for one week - "The Sea - making Scotland Healthier, Greener & Wealthier’ with workshops taking place during National Science and Engineering Week (15th to the 19th of March).

 

‘Healthier’ – pupils in P1 and 2 focussed on this aspect.  This workshop devised by STEM Ambassador Debra Brennan got pupils to look at what we eat, if any of what we eat comes from the sea and if it was good or bad for you.  The pupils also played a fishing game to ‘catch’ food products and discussed if it contained anything from the sea.

 

‘Greener’ issues were looked at by pupils in P3-5.  SAMS staff member Ruth Brennan and STEM Ambassador Kim Last developed an interactive game which involved pupils creating a big food web and throwing a ball of twine to each other with each child representing a different part of the food web, for example, the seal as predator would throw to the salmon as prey and onto the squid etc.  This workshop also got the young people to think about the new Marine Bill and the conservation of species (including humans) learning to live together.

 

‘Wealth’ from the sea was the focus of pupils in P6 and 7.  STEM Ambassador Caroline Carter developed this workshop to get the pupils to think about the generation of energy and money from the sea.  The workshop focused on renewable energy, wave devices, what causes  the tides, off-shore wind farms etc.  Technologies around biofuels were also examined to show the impact they have on our lives and how this can generate power and money.  A very interactive workshop with lots of discussion as well as hands on activities.

 

STEM Ambassadors, staff and students from SAMS and Glycomar have devlivered a total of 39 workshops to around 1100 primary school children in the Oban area.  In addition to this the GRAB Trust agreed to take on the P3-5's in the larger schools to deliver their workshop on marine litter called 'Seabirds don't like plastic'.  The schools programme also received a Live Literature Funding for a poet from the Isle of Luing to do a poetry workshop for Easdale Primary School to help them with their festival competition on marine poetry.

 

The programme leads into a competition for each age group that will be judged during the May festival. The competitions will culminate in an exciting opening event at the Corran Halls on Friday 21st May when all the work associated with the competitions will be displayed and performed.