Fizzics

I attended a training day on the new Energy Foresight resources this week.  Although the programme has run as a pilot before, covering NW England and London, this was the first time that the materials had been presented to teachers in Scotland and the strategy appeared to start at the top and work downwards, since the schools involved were located in Orkney, Caithness and North Sutherland.

The effectiveness of the resource has been investigated by the Open University and, from what I have seen this week, I agree that the content is presented in a fresh, modern style with clear animation and illustration to explain each aspect of the three topics covered: Radiation and Health, Managing Nuclear Waste and Electrical Energy, Production and Distribution.

I particularly like the Radiation and Health section, which contains a lot of Nuclear Medicine.  There are interviews with different healthcare professionals and I was pleased to see a lead role for women in this, since the Standard Grade Physics unit on Health Physics is such a great hook for girls in the classroom.

The Electrical Energy topic essentially covers everything you need to meet the learning outcomes of the first section of unit 6 of Standard Grade Physics, Energy Matters.  The coverage of different electricity production methods is comprehensive and is accompanied by an award winning visualisation that is fully interactive to allow pupils to see each stage of the process.

The final element concerns the disposal of nuclear waste.  There is a clear link to my own community here and I would expect this section to have much less of a following in other areas.  In terms of providing an insight into the kinds of jobs that pupils’ parents might be doing while they are at school, I think that it will provide a valuable local dimension to the resource within my own classroom.  I also hope that this section will help to provide a more informed consumption of the media in relation to the nuclear industry.  One criticism of this section, and I aired this during the course of the day, was that women were not given as high a representation in the case studies.  A site manager and an assistant at an information centre did not seem to be particularly interesting jobs compared to those opportunities presented in the other two sections.  The animations are snappy (see the screenshot above) and are used to good effect to support points made in the short videos.

I will definitely use this resource in my classroom and would encourage any other teacher to take up the Energy Foresight training day if you are offered a place.

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