![]() ![]() Over the course of the question-and-answer session, she says, she began to see how much they all had in common. Last spring, she talked with a middle school science class in rural Vermont as part of the Skype a Scientist program. “We've gotten to rural areas, as well, which is pretty exciting.”Įmily Green is also a PhD student at the University of Connecticut, where she works in an ant lab. What’s more, the participating classrooms aren’t just in metropolitan areas. “And we've had 500 sign up so far for the fall,” she says. Last semester alone, McAnulty says the program connected scientists to 800 classrooms in 28 countries and nearly every US state. McAnulty says the program also tries to match classrooms with scientists from underrepresented groups or from the same ethnic or socioeconomic groups “so that the students can interact with a scientist that they can really easily relate to.” Teachers can choose what kinds of scientists they want to talk to - bringing a chemist into a chemistry class, for example. “And these sessions can cover the scientist’s area of study, or it can be a general discussion of what it's like to be a scientist.” ![]() “So effectively, I match scientists with K-12 classrooms for question-and-answer sessions with the scientist,” she explains. She’s a PhD candidate studying the microbiomes of squid at the University of Connecticut, but she’s also the founder of Skype a Scientist, a program that uses video conferencing to connect volunteer scientists with classrooms around the world. If the first image that popped into your head was an older man with frizzy hair and a white lab coat, surrounded by bubbling test tubes, you’re not wrong - the Einsteinlike “mad scientist” is still a prevailing image in popular culture.īut in the real world, scientists are so much more: Just this summer, Science Friday has featured researchers who are developing a bandagelike flu vaccine studying polar bears from helicopters and investigating why living in space gives flatworms an extra head.īiologist Sarah McAnulty is on a mission to introduce kids to these kinds of actual working scientists. We do matching once every 2 weeks, so it's possible to get multiple match e-mails in each semester.It’s 2017. We match based on time zone, time availability, scientist type, and URM categories requested by teachers. How do you match the scientists and teachers? Sure, whatever works for you works for us! Tell the teacher that one sign-up form is for 1 session and if they want more sessions than that, all they need to do is fill out more session request forms. I thought I was only signed up to do 1 session, but my teacher thought I was going to do multiple. Gently remind the teacher that Skype a Scientist is intended as an interaction between students and scientists, not as general community service by scientists. Write their lesson plans, do a session a week for 10 weeks, get a background check, teach about something I am clueless about), what do I do? My teacher is requesting that I do something I didn’t think I had to do (e.g. We feel the best way to do that is with a conversation, not a lecture. We want this program to be as easy as possible for scientists to participate in and we also want students to feel that they've been heard. No, you do not need to prepare a lecture unless you really want to. ![]() Should I prepare a lecture for this class? Unfortunately we cannot control the responsiveness of teachers. ![]() If you have contacted your match 3 times with no response, e-mail and you will be put back into the matching pool. I was assigned a match but my teacher never contacted me, what do I do?Ĭheck your spam folder. If you'd like to support Skype a Scientist, please donate on our PATREON, mail a check made out to "Sarah Mack SciComm Inc." (our legal name) to 2433 E Norris St Philadelphia PA 19125 or donate via paypal! Donations are tax deductible! ![]()
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