LTS in the Guelph Mercury Online

Hey everyone,
One of the events our Let's Talk Science Guelph volunteers helped with was in the online edition of the Guelph Mercury!

You can catch the write-up and some of the pics from the November 23, 2012 PA Day at West Willow Woods here:

http://guelphmercury.blogs.com

Kudos to the volunteers for helping run such a great program!

Featured volunteer and educator AND welcome to the new school year!!

Happy September everyone!! The leaves are beginning to change.. our super-hot summer is (maybe?) starting to fade... and this week, students from kindergarten through university are headed back to school! That means that we are in full-swing planning mode, preparing for another exciting and fun year of outreach activities!

The beginning of a new semester means highlighting another one of our fantastic volunteers! Beginning this semester, we will also be featuring some of our dedicated educator partners, to recognize their everyday efforts to make science fun for their students!

Guest post: Moosonee / Moose Factory 2012 Trip!

The following is a guest post written by Jan, one of two University of Guelph Let's Talk Science volunteers to visit the remote communities of Moosonee and Moose Factory in Northern Ontario! Derek and Jan, the Guelph volunteers, were joined by Jeff, a volunteer from the Science Travels program at the University of Ottawa!

Microbes photos from Nottawa

The grade 6s at Nottawa Elementary learned about microbes last week with the help of awesome volunteers Alex, Lesley, and Ramya! The highlight of the activity was inoculating agar plates with various things from around the classroom. If you want to make agar plates at home, check out this earlier post on our blog! 

As a person who works with fungi every day, I have to say that these.... plates.... were.... GROSS!!! :p Enjoy the pictures!

Science Rendezvous: Microbes at the library?!

Science Rendezvous is an annual event that connects scientists with the public to show everyone how fun science can be! This year, Science Rendezvous took place on Saturday, May 12th, and Let's Talk Science volunteers from the University of Guelph performed activities in downtown Guelph (super bubbles and slime!!) and at the main branch of the Guelph Public Library!

At the library, awesome volunteers Jan Edward and Nicole showed kids the cool, friendly, and sometimes scary microbes that play an important role in our lives! The participants had the chance to grow their own microbes, and here are the results! By the way, if you ever want to make your own media at home, check out this earlier post on our blog!

Here are the photos!

The 2012 All Science Challenge

Our second-ever All Science Challenge at the U of G was a tremendous success!! With twice as many kids participating this year, the competition was twice as stiff!! The hard work of all the participants was evident in their amazing answers to their difficult questions, and the creativity in the design challenge amazed parents, teachers, and judges alike! During the lunch period, we all enjoyed an amazing presentation by Wild Ontario, who brought live raptors into the competition room!

In the end, the top two spots went to the two teams from Rockwood PS! Third place went to a team from Kortright Hills PS! Kortright Hills PS also walked away with the Spirit Award (we couldn't say no to tu-tus!).

Check out some of the exciting pictures from our big day! Many more photos, as well as high resolution versions of these pictures, are available upon request!

A team from Rockwood putting their heads together.

Let's Talk Microbes at Family Housing!

Let's Talk Science volunteers visited the community group at Family Housing for a super fun activity about Microbes last week! We learned why it is important to wash our hands properly...

Unwashed hands

It's Rural Week!

Whew! We've been so busy lately that it's been hard to keep up with the blog! Stay tuned for another post soon about some of the other amazing things we've been up to!

Our beautiful spring weather has meant the return of rural trips! Now that we don't need to worry about school closures or unsafe road conditions, our volunteers have hit the road, to bring science to kids in three rural communities in this week alone!! Derek, Midori, and Mary paid a return visit to St. Peter's school in Dublin, ON, to teach the grade 1/2 students about simple machines, and to show the kids how to make Cheerio-a-pults (sorry parents :p)!! Bryce and Erin are spending most of the day today in Arthur to discuss why matter matters, to teach the grade 4's about pulleys, and to talk to the kindergartens about why science and math are cool! And Karen and Crystal are off to Maryborough to perform some chemistry magic, to deliver some super science challenges, and to teach the grade 1's about energy in their everyday lives! These three dedicated teams of volunteers have travelled a combined 400 km this week!!! 

Let's Talk.. Philosophy?!

This year, we LTSers at the U of G have made a commitment to bridge the perceived gap between science and the arts! We want to help people recognize that science plays a major role in everything we do - even things without an obvious connection to math or science! So when we were approached by a graduate student in philosophy about putting together a presentation for his philosophy open house, we leapt at the chance! This collaboration was a huge success: we were even featured in an article in our local newspaper, The Guelph Mercury!!

Philopolis is an annual event at the U of G and McGill University that is the brainchild of Brooke Struck, currently a grad student in philosophy here at the U of G. He invited us to put together a panel about philosophy in science. We recruited a team of volunteers and some professors to discuss the species problem - just what exactly is a species anyway, and what are the implications for research in different fields, for politics, and for biodiversity and conservation?  We started off with a hands-on game about how to define species: are these critters just variation within a single species, or are they three different species? 

Five graduate students then presented about how species are used and / or defined in their fields of mycology, botany, conservation biology, and in the contexts of agricultural pest identification and the meaningfulness of model organisms. The presentations were followed by an entertaining debate between professors. The audience responded with some challenging questions, and in the end, I think all of us walked away with a new perspective!

Happy Darwin Day AND an article about LTS at Guelph!

Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Charles Darwin's 203rd birthday! To celebrate, why not send e-cards to your friends, family, and colleagues?

We are also very proud to share an article about Let's Talk Science at the U of G that was published online this week in the U of G e-zine, @Guelph! Check it out!

Featured Volunteer Pair - Xin and Ramya

Xin and Ramya began volunteering in the Fall of 2011. They have received rave reviews from the teachers and students who they have worked with thanks to their enthusiasm and creativity!

Q. What are you studying and what have you studied in the past?

Xin:  I went to University of Waterloo to complete my BSc. in Biochemistry/Biotechnology specialization and now I am doing my master study in Environment Biology in University of Guelph.

Ramya: I do have my undergraduate degree in Biotechnology (Engineering)from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), India and presently pursuing masters in Bioinformatics at University of Guelph.

Q. What has been your favourite part of volunteering (or what is the best activity that you've done so far)?

Xin: The best part of this experience is to see the smiles from every single kids, and get them to like science even when they are young. Learning science can be so enjoyable if the fun ideas are introduced to all those kids, which is why I am so thankful that they have this program to cover kids from age 6-17. Teaching the kids to appreciate science and not just some boring formula in chemistry, or nasty animals that scare them. 

I only had chance to volunteer with one activity, which is budding science that talked about how insects and birds adapt to their habitats. This activity was great because it allows the kids to have hands on experience to "become a bird" when feeding and to build their own insects.

Ramya: The excitement and happiness in each young scientist(kid) after there hands on activity.