We are living in challenging times with restrictions upon many aspects of our lives.
We would have had the Youth STEMM Awards ceremony for 2020 by now yet alas that too has, quite rightly, had to be postponed. I have been watching many of you Youth STEMMers coming up with some wonderfully creative and inventive ways to continue your work in celebrating and exploring STEMM subjects.
I too have been getting creative and during lockdown I started tweeting out what to see in the night sky during scheduled #FamilyStargazeWithMark events. This morphed into a brand new podcast called ‘The Pocket Astronomer’, where as the title suggests, it’s like having me in your pocket guiding you around the night sky. In November the usual monthly format is going weekly and we have an extra special celebrity Christmas special lined up for December. Stay tuned for more information on this!
A big part of my annual calendar is the Norwich Science Festival, a wonderful yearly celebration of all things science. This year sadly, the festival has had to scale back its activities but has a great online programme. I’m very pleased to be able to get involved in it again this year. I’ve got three events that you could join in with which you can use toward your hours. I’m particularly excited to be presenting a “24 Hour Space Spectacular” which is a 24 hour lecture all about space. This will be a warm up for my world record attempt next year to break the record for the longest lecture. I hope as many of you as possible can tune in to keep me going. I start at 6pm on Monday 26th October and finish the next day at 6pm. Checkout the Norwich Science Festival website for more info.
Sadly we are probably going to be in for a few more months of uncertainty and restrictions on our activities but the work of you Youth STEMMers through the many social media channels is bringing fabulous ‘edutainment’ to lots of people. Keep up the good work and I do hope we get to see each other again soon.
MT
