Anne Forbes accepts the BHERT award on behalf of the MyScience team

The B-HERT awards recognize outstanding achievements in collaboration between business and higher education in the fields of Research and Development, Education and Training and Community Engagement.   The criteria for judging collaborations as worthy of an award are innovativeness, the strength of the relationship between collaborating partners, outreach inclusion, wider outcomes achieved and cultural impact on the partner/organization.
The purpose of the B-HERT is to pursue initiatives that will advance the  goals and improve the performance of both business and higher education for  the benefit of Australian society.  B-HERT is the only body where leaders  of Australia’s business, research, professional and academic communities come  together to address important issues of common concern, to improve the  interaction between Australian business and higher education institutions, and  to help guide the future directions of higher education.  In pursuing this mission B-HERT aims to influence public opinion and government policy on selected issues of importance. B-HERT believes that a prerequisite for a more prosperous and equitable society in Australia is a more highly-educated  community.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, Julia Gillard,  in her address at the Awards gala dinner challenged universities and business to work more closely with schools, including primary schools. This is in line with recent media comments from the new Chief Scientist Professor Penny Sackett, Rupert Murdoch, and Heather Ridout (Australian Industry Group).

The recent Young Scientist 2008 Awards presentation was a proud moment for all of us involved in MyScience – students, parents, teachers, principals, mentors and project team  members from ACU, DET, IBM and Sydney University.   This year, 50% of the awards in the primary category were given to MyScience students.  There were over 500 primary school teams that submitted entries to the Young Scientist Award Scheme and only 24 finalists.  Of these 12 were from MyScience schools:  Beecroft PS, Beresford Road PS, Quakers Hill PS and Quakers Hill East PS.  In addition, seven teams from both Beecroft PS and Quakers Hill Public School were each given a Certificate of Excellence, a secondary award also indicating submissions of a high standard.

The Budding Young Scientist Award, the K-2 equivalent of the Young Scientist Award was given to students from Quakers Hill Public School.

The Arup Built Environment Award, given to the primary entry that best demonstrates scientific/engineering efficiency, resource planning, structural design and/or environmental sustainability was awarded to students from Beecroft Public School.

 In his address to the audience on behalf of the NSW Minister of Education, Lindsay Wasson, Director of the Department of Education, Western Region paid tribute to the efforts of those involved in MyScience and acknowledged the impact the program has made in primary science education so far.

Congratulations to all the award winners and their teachers, principals and mentors!

Scientist Mentors - University (5:46)

Scientist Mentors - High School (2:19)

Primary Principals (2:55)

Primary Classroom Teachers  (2:49)

Spark kids’ curiosity about the world…then help them answer their own questions. Be part of a team to inspire a whole new breed of young scientists!

Here’s an opportunity for scientists or engineers who would like to mentor primary school children as they carry out their own scientific investigations on a topic of their choice. The time commitment required involves two 2-hour classroom visits (along with other mentors) and about 1 to 2 hours a week of online mentoring from June to August 2008. To find out more, send us a note through the Contact page and come to the mentor briefing session on 31 March.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Richard Collins has accepted our invitation to become our patron. We are confident that with his wealth of experience, Richard will be able to inspire a whole new generation of budding scientists to take up science in high school and later as a career.

Read more here.

During this term students have been looking at the effect of chemical reactions (how can we make bouncing balls bouncier?), the conductivity of things in the classroom (which things in my classroom makes the globe within our circuit to light up?), magnetic fields (can you make a paperclip float in air?) and environmental issues (can water and oil be mixed?).

One of the key features of the Science club is having older students as mentors. Several Year 6 students have volunteered to help the younger students work through the experiments. It’s a fantastic opportunity for building relationships among the student population while providing enriching learning experiences.

The Science Club is also forging better working relationships with the local High School. The High School has kindly agreed to lend any necessary Science equipment – so far the arrangement has already seen the borrowing of amp measuring equipment for the session on conductivity.

The Year 1 students have been keen to attend and their questions have been endless. They are starting to use the language of science and to understand that experimentation is all about trial and error. Year 6 students are also enjoying the responsibility of leading the younger students and they are having fun with the equipment.

Overall, the Science Club appears to be a success at engaging the scientific minds of students.

We would like to welcome Adam Selinger to the MyScience Project team. Adam is the new Executive Officer of the Science Foundation for Physics within the University of Sydney. He is a graduate of science (ecology and evolutionary psychology) and science communication from the Australian National University. He worked at Questacon where he acquired his enthusiasm for talking science with public audiences. He then traveled widely working in science centres in Canada, Norway and the UK. One highlight was working as the science communicator and production manager for the Edinburgh International Science Festival that incorporated outreach programs and media activities.

Since returning to Australia, Adam has worked for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Science Manager at British Council Australia. Working as a consultant, Adam’s clients included UNSW, Sydney Marathon Festival, Australia Day Fun Run, Premier’s Gala Concerts and Cosmos magazine. Adam created ‘Cafe Scientific’ and ‘Science on Tap’, variations of the well-known ‘Science in the Pub’ for public engagement with science issues.

Running a science communication business, Adam introduced and championed the electronics workshop, ‘MadLab’, which has featured at the Australian Science Festival, Canberra since 1996 and at events throughout Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. As the creative mind behind the not-for-profit company, Children’s Discovery Museum Ltd, Adam developed and staged ‘Kids Dig @ The Rocks’, ‘Build It’, ‘Tour of the Tummy’ and other shows and hands-on workshops which regularly run during school holidays.

We are very excited to have Adam on the MyScience team and look forward to working with him as we expand the program in 2008!

Two of Beecroft Public School’s teams from Ms Samantha Nicol’s Year 6 class were named finalists in the Years 3-6 category of the Young Scientist awards. Leanne Williams and Joanna Yu’s investigation was on “Formal English or instant messaging” while Anand Madan and Andrew Tsui’s investigation was on “Memory and colour”. The teams were awarded at the Young Scientist Presentation Ceremony held on Friday, 26 October at the Powerhouse Museum.