Activity: Public Engagement and Outreach › Media Participation
Description
I, along with fellow colleagues in the Faculty of Science here at the University of Strathclyde, delivered three workshop sessions to twenty S3 pupils at Coatbridge High School. The workshops were aimed at promoting numeracy in secondary school children and helping to change the attitudes of secondary school children towards the subject of Maths. As a result, the workshops focused around looking at the spread of diseases and how Maths and Statistics can be used to model disease outbreaks. Activities involved pupils researching about contagious diseases such as the Zika and Ebola viruses, discussing how diseases can be transmitted and prevented, simulating the spread of diseases, using Excel software to visually display these simulations, learning about epidemiology and public health and researching and presenting on data analysis conducted (using Excel software) about the spread of West Nile virus in the United States. This activity resulted in establishing a link with Coatbridge High School.