To set the stage for what we hope to achieve with these presentations, I wanted to include a few excerpts from the mission statement for the ‘I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!’ program that SciChats is modeled on.
“….there has been a growing enthusiasm for “the public understanding of science”. This was originally conceived as ‘teaching the public more science’. More recently a consensus has emerged that communication is a two-way process and scientists need to engage in a dialogue with wider society.”
“It is also thought that in order for citizens to meaningfully participate in this dialogue and in making decisions in their lives, an understanding of the scientific process is in many ways more crucial than an understanding of specific science facts… real world experience or ‘experiential learning’ is far more memorable for young people and helps them to develop life skills.”
That sums it up pretty well. Our goal here is not to teach the students some particular nuggets of science information, but to expose them to the process of science, and to provoke their own desire to figure out how the world works. With that in mind, we should keep our presentations simple, clear, and engaging.
Each chat session will last roughly 30 minutes. We will use Google Hangout for the video chats, because of its screen-sharing function that allows you to show the students a presentation while speaking to them. (Instructions here, we will also go over this at the presentation workshop on February 3rd.) We want to use video to show the students the lab space, but the best way to do this may be by taking video of yourself or a coworker doing something beforehand to include in your presentation. For many of us, the lab environment is too hectic and loud to work for this purpose.
Your presentation should take 15 minutes. The remaining time will be for questions and discussion with the students.
Now, on to the anatomy of the presentation. In 15 minutes, expect to have time to cover:
introduction: what do you work on? why is it important?
how the methods you use work
1-2 pieces of data
That’s it. Seriously. If you manage to get through your entire presentation in the time allotted, we may be doing something wrong. The goal here is to spark curiosity and get the students excited to ask questions as soon as possible. Analogies, illustrations, and media will be key to getting your ideas across and keeping the students engaged.
I will run through my presentation at the workshop on February 3rd, and we can talk in more detail about presentation format then.