24 January 2018
ASP's team of pupil Science Ambassadors have really excelled themselves this week, playing an essential role in the success of several different workshops. Ben Wilson, Tom Pettit and Oliver Williams acted as mentors to primary school children taking part in a pilot Creative Coding workshop, designed and led by local expert Dr Mark Thornton. The children completed coding exercises in Scratch, developing a landing simulator for a mission to Mars, with the Science Ambassadors providing essential assistance with programming and software problems. Spaceflight specialists Joe O'Shea and Tom Preston spent several hours at Woodstock CE Primary School's Earth and Space evening, helping children to build and launch stomp rockets and telling visitors about their trip to Russia's Space City in 2017. It was particularly impressive to see the boys working alongside professional science outreach organisations such as Science Oxford, Bright Sparks and The Curiosity Box at this event. The biggest turn out of Science Ambassadors was at the monthly Science Oxford Saturday Science Club, which was fully booked with over sixty participants this month. Fortunately, so many Science Ambassadors want to help with these Saturday sessions that Senior Science Ambassador, Alasdair Czaplewski, is now having to organise a rota to give everyone a turn. Our pupil Science Ambassadors are definitely becoming one of the ASP's most important resources and continue to make a huge impact on encouraging enjoyment of STEM activities in the Abingdon area.