Latest news
SAW cascading through the North of England
Enterprising teachers in Tameside Christine Williams and Judith Willis contacted SAW for advice on running their own SAW project, with a view to sharing learnings throughout their region. Sourcing scientists through STEMNET and local writers and artists, they worked with children at Hollingworth Primary and Nursery School and from the local high school to run a SAW project on the theme of ‘Water’ for a week in November 2009. See the wonderful resulting work or read their PowerPoint presentation containing hints and tips on how to run your own SAW project.
Christine and Judith subsequently ran a SAW workshop for teachers in the Tameside region to showcase their project. They also invited SAW founder Anne Osbourn to give a presentation on SAW. Following this workshop SAW projects are now going ahead in other primary and secondary schools in the Tameside area. To contact them, email Christine or Judith.
Working with Norfolk County Council in
twenty Norfolk schools
Following the success of the 15 SAW projects last year taking research science into schools, SAW was approached by Norfolk County Council to run a further series of SAW projects in 20 Norfolk schools. To broaden the variety of research even further, scientists from the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital took part, as well as scientists from the John Innes Centre and the Institute for Food Research in Norwich. Introductory briefing workshops were run by the SAW team for participating teachers and scientists. See SAW in the classroom for full details of the projects. Following the success of this series of projects, Norfolk County Council are keen to extend this to more Norfolk schools. Read Norfolk County Council’s glowing endorsement.
New resources to help teachers and scientists run SAW projects
SAW receives numerous requests for information on how to set up and run SAW projects from teachers, scientists, writers and artists. There are now many articles about SAW and how it works available. See our Press page for articles about how SAW works, also the Teachers page for downloads available, including a presentation written by teachers called Running your own SAW project. If you’d like any more information, please contact us.
New workshops for teachers
Following on from the successful Primary Science Conferences workshops for teachers in Yorkshire and Humberside, the SAW team have recently run workshops for teachers in Norfolk, Harlow, Dundee and Manchester. SAW presentations also took place at the TES Education 2009 event in London and the 2009 Annual Joint Primary Science Regional Conference in Yorkshire on Science and Creativity at the Heart of the Curriculum.
More teachers are receiving training in SAW techniques as part of their teacher training at the University of East Anglia, and some teachers throughout the UK are also being trained to ‘cascade’ SAW training to other teachers in their area. We are planning more workshops in the near future in the North of England and other UK sites. Please contact us if you’d like to be put on our email list for upcoming events.
Workshops for scientists
A series of workshops to train scientists in SAW techniques to help take their research science into the wider community have taken place over the past year. Many talks and workshops take place in and around the University of East Anglia, close to the current home of the SAW Trust. If you’d like to know about upcoming events, please email us and leave your details.
Formal endorsement of the value of SAW for the international scientific community
SAW is now the formal outreach mechanism for two major international science consortia. This enables scientists working on large international collaborative projects to take their research science into schools, so promoting understanding and informed debate. One of these is ‘Smartcell’, a European Framework 7 consortium under the Green Factory theme in which 19 research groups are working together, aiming to provide a toolkit for engineering of high value compounds such as pharmaceuticals in plants. The second is ‘Syntegron’, a trans-Atlantic collaboration jointly funded by the National Science Foundation in the US and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK which aims to use innovative strategies to design metabolic pathways in organisms. SAW’s involvement in these prestigious awards is endorsement of the recognition of the value of SAW by scientific research funding bodies and the international scientific community. See projects associated with Smartcell at Lionwood and Morley schools.
The SAW Challenge
This initiative aims to help break down barriers between disciplines at postgraduate level. As a partner in the Beacons for Public Engagement Programme awarded to the University of East Anglia, SAW set up the event to engage postgraduate students from different disciplines and promote cross-fertilisation. Students from the faculties of Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and Social Sciences took part in a one day workshop where they explored the theme of chaos and order. See photos, poems and artwork from the SAW Challenge day.
SAW has recently been awarded funding from the CUE East Enhancement Fund to run more workshops along these lines, but with added training to extend the goal of the workshops into creating groups of early career professionals who are able to go into schools and deliver their own SAW projects.
