News
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Protect Our Oceans exhibition launched: invention ideas from young Canadians
Fifteen Little Inventors ideas have been brought to life by professional makers and artisans out of hundreds of entries received. Presented together in English and French to celebrate this year’s launch of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Little Inventors turns ideas into reality! Calling children to share their ideas with the world. They encourage all invention ideas – from the helpful and practical, to the unusual and wacky.
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Peripheral Vision International (PVI)
Peripheral Vision International (PVI) is an award-winning international non-profit that uses media, technology, and popular culture to catalyse social interest and change around the world in a broad range of topics, including biodiversity, climate change, sustainable energy, conservation and health.
Working together with a wide number of partners, PVI has designed television programmes, videos, audio games and comics that have been viewed, read, interacted with, or listened to hundreds of millions of times across dozens of countries.
PVI aims to be a nimble and responsive organization that can rapidly mobilize creative, innovative, and disruptive media projects in response to crises or urgent problems, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken as a whole, their projects support social change, aim to correct misinformation, elevate underrepresented communities, and ensure young people around the world have the information they need to live healthier and more productive lives. A special focus is given to last mile communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the world’s largest youth population lives.
N*Gen, (focussed In NIDA News on 26 May) is Africa’s first science show for kids, has recently launched on Common Sense Media’s new streaming service (available through Samsung, VIZIO, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Peacock, iOS and Android). The project has been unique in elevating African scientists and educators for a western audience.
PVI has also been recently been involved in the publication of the book ‘Entertainment-Education Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice’. Available open access, which means that readers have free and unlimited access.
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Science Communication Prize 2021
Each year the Biochemical Society (UK) has looked to identify and celebrate outstanding science communicators with an annual Science Communication Prize.Entries must be bioscience themed and aimed towards the general public. In 2021, the Science Communication Prize is open in two higher education categories: one open to Foundation/Undergraduate students and another to Postgraduate students.
Entries can be submitted as a written piece of no more than 1,500 words or in a media format (e.g. video or audio) of 2-5 minutes long. Entries must be bioscience themed and aimed at the general public.
The winning entries will be published in the Society’s magazine, The Biochemist (for written entries), and on the Society’s website.
Applications will close on 09 August 2021
- Criteria and Guidelines - Find out if your entry is eligible for the Prize and read our FAQs.
- Get Inspired: past winners - What makes a good science communication piece? Find out how to create something great and see previous winning entries from the competition.
- The Prizes
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N*Gen - Next Generation Television
N*Gen (pronounced "engine”) or Next Generation Television, was first aired on Ugandan TV in September, 2020 and since then, the show, which features 13 26-minute episodes, has been picked up by TV networks in more than half a dozen African countries. In February 2021 it debuted in North America and the Caribbean on The Africa Channel, airing every Saturday and Sunday at 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET.N*Gen is the brainchild of six teachers from Clarke Junior School in Kampala and the East African non-profit organisation Peripheral Vision International, which funds and produces it.
Targeting children ages 8 to 12, the show looks at science through an African lens. Episodes are filmed on location in Uganda, as well as Nigeria and Kenya, and at the PVI studio in Kampala. A team of teachers and producers in Uganda as well as Nigeria and Kenya brainstorm ideas for episodes. For many of them, it was their first time working in TV.
Episode subjects range from astrophysics to biology to the natural sciences. Presenters give short lessons on topics such as bees, robots, sounds, water and palaeontology. They conduct science experiments – for example, how to make a model of an X-ray of their hand using paper and flour.
"Choosing a science focus for N*Gen is an absolute necessity because not only is it a neglected area, it is considered one of the hard subjects [for many students]," says Joy Kiano, a teacher who has a Ph.D. in both biochemistry and molecular biology and is a consultant with Peripheral Vision International. Kiano says it was important to feature African women in science. Some male teachers appear but guest scientists are mainly female.
"Society expects little from girls and women," says Mugadu. "Girls need to be empowered to reach their full potential academically and explore disciplines that are mainly pursued by boys”.
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Empowering migrant communities through science
Native Scientist, the non-profit Europe-wide organisation providing ´Science+language’ educational workshops for migrant pupils and webinar trainings on science outreach for scientists aged 20-40 year olds has recently hosted its first online workshop . Involving 10-15 year old Portuguese-speaking pupils from Cuxhaven, in northern Germany, they were joined by scientists Carolina Peralta and Hanna Fokt, to hear about biological clocks that exist in all living organisms and that help them adapt to different times of the day and the year. They also learnt that many bacteria are living in/on our body and they help us to stay healthy and digest food.Since its foundation in 2013, Native Scientist has organized over 150 workshops, reaching over 3,000 pupils and creating a network of 800 international scientists dedicated to improving science and language education in 10 different languages.
Native Scientist is open to receive requests from teachers and from scientists.
Teachers: host a ‘Native Scientist’ workshop
Scientists: inspire leaders of the futurePrincipal contact: Joana Moscoso
Website: www.nativescientist.com
NIDA Profile: innovative-initiatives-scienceliteracy/NativeScientist -
(Mis)informed about what? What it means to be a science-literate citizen in a digital world
Science literacy is often held up as crucial for avoiding science-related misinformation and enabling more informed individual and collective decision-making. But research has not yet examined whether science literacy enables this, nor what skills it would need to encompass to do so.A report by Emily L. Howell and Dominique Brossard poses three questions to outline what it should mean to be science literate in today’s world: 1) How should we conceptualize science literacy? 2) How can we achieve this science literacy? and 3) What can we expect science literacy’s most important outcomes to be?
The report suggests that Science literacy, should be best conceptualized as encompassing three dimensions of literacy spanning the lifecycle: Civic science literacy, digital media science literacy, and cognitive science literacy.
The authors conclude that achieving science literacy, particularly for adults, poses challenges and will probably require a structural perspective. Digital divides continue to be a major structural barrier, and community literacy and building science literacy into media and science communication provide promising opportunities.
Emily L. Howell and Dominique Brossard
Full text article PNAS April 13, 2021 118 (15) e1912436117
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912436117 -
Webinar: Realizing the Potential of Open for Equitable, Resilient Recovery - 5 May 2021
Open access and open science more broadly have great potential to accelerate the research necessary to deliver on the SDGs, as well as to place high quality information into the hands of citizens, helping them take better decisions.
Yet openness alone does not guarantee equity in access to and use of information to support development. Furthermore, the abundance of free information sources online can all too often lead to confusion and the rapid spread of misinformation. The COVID-19 pandemic has only underlined the urgency of finding solutions.
Being held in conjunction with the UN Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals, 4 to 5 May 2021 this side-event will explore the issues which governments and other stakeholders will need to resolve in order to realise the potential of open access and open science as accelerators of strong, sustainable and equitable development.
Speakers:
- Dilara Begum, Chair, Department of Information and Library Sciences, East-West University, Bangladesh
- Ellen Tise, Senior Director, Library and Information Services, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
- Omo Oaiya, Chief Strategy Officer, WACREN, Ghana
- Thanos Giannakopoulos, Head, Dag Hammarskjold Library
- Jonathan Hernandez Perez, Researcher, UNAM, Mexico
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eLearning Africa Primary and Secondary Education Virtual Exchange, 7-13 June 2021
E-Learning Africa, a global network of professionals working in the field of ICT supported education and training, has launched the eLearning Africa Primary and Secondary Education Virtual Exchange as one part of a series of peer-to-peer events.Offering the opportunity to join a Community of Practice and meet colleagues, stakeholders, policy makers, decision makers, educators, and providers of online learning and EdTech products, at a time when new education solutions have never been so relevant. The e-Learning Africa online platform allows users to engage, learn and meet from office or home.
Details of the e-Learning Africa Annual Conference, Academy, Webinars, Round Tables, Networking Events and Newsletter are available in English and French.
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Media and Information Literate Citizens: Think Critically, Click Wisely!: 23, 27 and 29 April 2021
An international online event examining the crucial role of media and information literacy (MIL) for the good of society. The webinar will culminate in the launch of UNESCO’s MIL Curriculum for Educators and Learners(second edition).
A flyer providing more details is available and you may register for the event from on.unesco.org
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Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030)
Promoting ocean science, policy and management for sustainable development.
The United Nations Decade will aim provide a common framework to ensure that ocean science can fully support countries’ actions to sustainably manage the Oceans and more particularly to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.Embracing participative and transformative processes so that scientists, policy makers, managers, and service users can work together to ensure that ocean science delivers greater benefits for both the ocean ecosystem and for society.