Video is more accessible now than it’s ever been: ask any teenager with a mobile phone and a YouTube account. SciCast is an ongoing, national effort to extract educational value – and, it must be said, a certain amount of fun – from the energy and excitement surrounding web video.
This hands-on workshop will introduce the project, offer advice about equipment and practical issues, and provide direct experience of SciCast’s unusually direct approach to making films. That is: we’ll push a demonstration into your hands, give you a camera, and tell you to get on with it. But don’t worry – we’ll help you out if you get stuck.
So far, SciCast has collected more than three hundred films from schools, families, and professional scientists, shared free of charge through the project website, www.planet-scicast.com. They can be used to introduce lesson topics, as a source of inspiration for activities and demonstrations, or simply for entertainment. The best films each year are celebrated in a glittering awards ceremony, held this year at the famous Royal Institution in London.
Help us build the world’s most entertaining science resource site, by pointing your students in the right direction, then letting their imaginations loose. This workshop should give you the experience and confidence to see what happens next.

 

Jonathan Sanderson

Following a physics degree, Jonathan fell into science television rather by accident. He subsequently wrote and produced series for the BBC and ITV, as well as Scope for RTÉ and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Five.

He’s now a freelance science media consultant, working for the likes of the research councils and the Beacons for Public Engagement in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, and various universities and science visitor centres. His major project for the last three years has been Planet SciCast, which he runs for a consortium led by NESTA and the Institute of Physics, and – in Ireland – Forfás.