Join Us at our Green Skills Fayres in the South West!

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What are Green Skills Fayres?

The Inspire Sustainability team at UWE Engineering have organised several Green Skills Fayres to take place at three schools in the South West on the 24th and 30th of November, and 2nd of December. We are looking for people working in green jobs to join us in inspiring secondary school-aged students (11-16) at Hans Price Academy in Weston-Super-Mare, Bristol Brunel Academy in Speedwell, and Digitech Studio School in Warmley. We want to inspire young people to develop green skills that they can take with them into their future careers.

What are the Green Skills Fayres?

Anyone in a green job will have the opportunity to discuss how your work contributes to sustainability, the green skills that you’ve developed, and how you apply these to your job. You will be provided with a table to display items relevant to your job to engage young people and spark conversations. STEM ambassadors are also encouraged to bring along any promotional material and invite students to visit your place of work in future if possible. Afterwards, groups of students will have the opportunity to share the green skills and careers that most interest them and how they could develop these.

Read more here: Inspire young people at a Green Skills Fayre – Graphic Science

Woman writing the word career on a wall while standing on a step containing educational graphics.

We are particularly interested in hearing from people who either work in the fields of or have green skills related to climate science, decarbonisation, and climate adaptation. Green skills are skills that are needed to support a sustainable society and are, therefore, broad. These could include skills relating to research, technical aspects, operational management, and monitoring, as well as soft skills, such as creativity and resilience.

If you would like to get involved in the Green Skills Fayre, then please click the button below and fill in the form to register your interest!

How can we support young people to develop green skills?

Prior to the fayres, we will be leading assemblies for young people to get them to consider what green skills they could develop from the subjects they are studying at school, and how they might apply them in different jobs to help the West of England reach its goal of net zero carbon emissions.

We will also be providing workshops that tie-in to the Green Skills Fayres and allow young people to have a go at digital engineering, scientific research, undertaking a green audit of their school, establishing an eco committee, debating sustainability topics, and developing creative communication campaigns.

ESERO-UK CPD to take place at UWE Bristol

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Would you like to learn how to use space as a theme to engage and inspire children in STEM subjects? The STEM Ambassador West England Hub and UWE Bristol are hosting a CPD session for STEM Ambassadors in May, on how to run European Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) based activities with schools.

The ESERO-UK office is based in the National STEM Learning Centre at York University. It is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) along with other partners. The aim of ESERO-UK is to both engage and inspire children in STEM subjects by using the context of “Space” as a method of delivery. To do this ESERO-UK uses a wealth of freely available quality assured resources, methods and ideas.

During the free 2 hour session, ESERO-UK Ambassador Jo Richardson will demonstrate how to use activities with schools. Jo will provide a hands on guide to what resources are available, free access to the database and illustrate just how successful an approach can be when promoting STEM to a school based audience. Although the session is mainly aimed at those working within a primary setting, many of the free resources available are also appropriate for the secondary classroom as well.

The session will run on Tuesday 7th May, 09:30-11:30 at UWE Bristol. STEM Ambassadors can sign up here.

Anyone who isn’t already a STEM Ambassador can register at www.stem.org.uk.

X Factor for Engineers – I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here!

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I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here! gives school students the chance to talk with engineers – and you could be one of those engineers.

Taking place every November, March and June with applications open all the time, I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here! is an online event where school students connect with engineers. It’s an X Factor-style competition between engineers, where the students are the judges.

Students challenge the engineers over fast-paced online live CHATs. They ASK the engineers anything they want, and VOTE for their favourite engineer to win a prize of £500 to communicate their work with the public.

Evaluation shows that taking part in I’m an Engineer helps students to improve their understanding of what engineering is and what engineers do. Teachers and engineers benefit too:

Would you like to be one of the engineers taking part? You can read more information and find out how to apply here.

I’m an Engineer, Get me out here! is currently running two zones, from 5th-16th November.

Women Like Me supports Lego Mindstorms training

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On Monday 22nd October, Lego Mindstorms training will come to UWE Bristol, courtesy of the West England STEM Ambassador Hub and Raising Robots, and supported by UWE’s Women Like Me.

The Hub have 12 EV3 Mindstorms Robot kits for use in local schools.  This is a fantastic resource, which is free for the schools to use with the support of a STEM Ambassador.

Monday’s training session will be delivered by John Pinkney, a LEGO Education Certified Trainer.  Places were booked out fast – everyone loves robots!

The training session will cover:

  • Running short, high-impact sessions with LEGO Mindstorms – including quick builds for maximum learning impact
  • Moving Mindstorms away from instruction led building
  • Key builds to inspire students
  • An introduction to sensors – bringing Mindstorms to life with sensors and how to get the most out of them:
  • Ultrasonic, Colour and Touch
  • Gyro – its power and its challenges!

Some of our Women Like Me engineers will be participating in the training, enabling them to use the kits as part of their outreach activities.

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