Inaugural SciXchange Rural Outreach Trip a Success
This October, SciXchange undertook their first rural outreach trip to bring hands-on science activities to remote communities who may not have the same access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programming as schools in urban areas. It was a unique experience for students in rural communities to have a guest STEM role model in their classroom.
Over the course of three days, a team of four travelled 3.5 hours northeast of Toronto to deliver science activities to three schools. The team included SciXchange’s coordinator, Leigh Paulseth, along with three volunteers: a biomedical sciences undergraduate student, a computer science undergraduate student, and a medical physics graduate student.
TMU Volunteers, Meghan Koo, Zayneb Al-Hantoshi and Ali Hashmi, present the "Mars Rover" activity at Maynooth Public School. The school is located about 3 hours from Toronto, near the southeast entrance to Algonquin Park.
The team started off the trip with delivering activities to students at Whitney Public School in Whitney, Ontario. The first class consisted of 10 enthusiastic Grades 1-3 students who built Soap-Power Boats using concepts of surface tension. Next, the team delivered a Medical Imaging activity where a class of 12 spirited Grades 4-8 students were introduced to the interdisciplinary field of medical physics based on research by TMU’s Dr. Miranda Kirby.
One educator from Whitney Public School commented that the volunteers did “[f]antastic work … and portrayed a real love of science!”
The second day took the team to Maynooth Public School in Maynooth, Ontario, where the day started off with Grade 5/6 students being introduced to coding and programming using Micro:Bits. In this activity, each student programmed a pocket-sized computer to play Rock, Paper, Scissors with fellow classmates. Next, a class of energetic Grade 1/2 students built and raced Soap-Powered boats while testing hypotheses and making scientific conclusions based on their experiments. The day concluded with a passionate class of Grade 3/4 students who designed and tested Space Rovers using concepts of gravity and air resistance.
The last day brought the team to George Vanier Catholic School in Combermere, Ontario, where Micro:Bits was delivered to two classes of students in grades 5-8. The team also visited the two Grades 1-4 classes to engage them with Soap-Powered Boats. All three schools were left with materials to participate in SciXchange’s Virtual Halloween event, leveraging the use of technology to increase access to science programming for rural communities.
“I was so proud of the way each volunteer represented TMU and the Faculty of Science,” said Leigh Paulseth, the organizer of the trip. “The students we visited were so curious about our TMU volunteers' chosen fields and what further STEM education looks like.”
Overall, it was an extremely rewarding experience for both the students in the rural communities and volunteers from TMU. Partnerships between SciXchange and educators across three school boards have been developed, opening the doors to accessibility in STEM education and beyond.
Funding for the outreach trip was provided by Let's Talk Science (external link, opens in new window) , a long-time partner of SciXchange and a national charity dedicated to free STEM education for youth.