While the Giant Jump rocks the UK (see page 2)- and the British Association is encouraging us to tell jokes in Laugh Lab for the next six months, the Association for Science Education will be providing less spectacular but still exciting classroom support for science teachers throughout Science Year.

Providing money is a good starting point. Around 140 grants of pound;750 have already been made available by the ASE and the BA to schools trying something new as part of Science Year, and more will be available.

The ASE’s major contribution is promising - five themed CD-Roms will be available, free to secondary schools, from mid-September. The first of these will be sent automatically to each school’s head of science. Schools then have to register to receive the other four. They are intended to provide innovative replacements for existing approaches to the national curriculum. Separate materials will be available for upper primary pupils.

The two themes for the first term are Who am I? (diet, health, DNA, sex), and Is there life out there? (space, the earth, robots, consciousness). The content will be closely linked to the curriuclum, will involve interactive, computer-based learning, and teachers will be able to print paper-based resources from the CD-Rom.

There are other add-ons - each theme would have a “live” scientist available to answer pupils’ e-mails through the Science Year website. The scientist will also explain in an autobiographical piece on the website why they took up science in the first place. The CD-Rom will also have a template for producing a newsletter aimed at parents and including ready-made science puzzles and facts as well as space for articles about what is being achieved in Science Year at the school. There will also be ideas in the CD-Rom package for assemblies - including short dramatic pieces which could be presented to a school audience.

The BA, which has been promoting science since 1831, has a lively programme of new events and enhanced versions of regular activities - including Science Clubs for primaries, the BA Crest awards scheme for secondaries and Science Week. The aim is to use the opportunity provided by Science Year to get more schools and pupils involved than ever before.

The BA will be running a big Science Discovery Day at the Albert Hall on March 7, 2002, the day before the start of Science Week. This will be the culmination of the BA’s Science Year, drawing together many regional activities and taking science to a wider public outside schools. At about this time a BA-sponsored touring drama presentation will raise ethical issues and visit arts centres and similar venues all over the country.

During Science Year, and beyond, the National Trust will be showing how vital science is to the management and conservation of the land and buildings it owns. There will be “do touch” events showing how the task of caring for an historic building is carried out, and the science that lies behind the preservation strategy. The many National Trust properties nationwide concerned with historic scientific and technological developments will be open to school parties. Cragside House in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricvty is one example (school parties: mid-March to mid-November); Souter Lighthouse on the Northumbrian coast, where the power of prisms to magnify and redirect light can be studied, is another (open this year, for the first time, till Christmas); and of course there’s the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton, the father of British science, Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, where there is a new hands-on exhibition in the Science Discovery Centre (open until the end of October).

www.scienceyear.com

www.nationaltrust.org.ukeducation