Planet SciCast
A much revered contest to get children, young people, teachers, parents, science communicators and STEM professionals all making short films about practical science, the SciCast challenge is a serious way to have fun and learn science at the same time.
SciCast now includes the Future Morph Best Careers Film Category. This category is an ideal platform for teachers and students to explore how what they learn in the classroom has real-life implications in the working world. So what are you waiting for?
Hook your students with the promise of walking down the red carpet to receive the coveted SciCast Award and £250 in Amazon vouchers.
Hook yourself by knowing that by turning your students into filmmakers you’re helping them to hone those "paying attention to details" skills, and giving them the reason to really understand and explain a subject well.
You can also be proud that you’re
- Contributing to a growing resource of free, high-quality, entertaining and informative films.
- Using digital technology in the lab, classroom... or outside in the sun.
- Exploring collaborations between different disciplines.
- Making a permanent record of achievement.
- Inspiring the next generation of scientists and film-makers.
“My team of film-makers were spellbound by what they saw and were so inspired, they are planning next year’s entry already!” - Teacher and SciCast Producer 2009
The winner of the 2010 Future Morph Best Careers Film Category was Genevieve Hinde with her film entitled: 'Where STEM can take you.' Genevieve explains her ideas for the production saying: "The whole theme was around a train map, but instead of stations you have jobs and the trainlines are science, technology, engineering and maths."
How Does SciCast work?
Participants film and edit short pieces which are then collected on the Planet SciCast website as a shared resource, open to all. It’s also a web resource of all those movies (plus write-ups of their content), for the use and amusement of everyone involved, and particularly for schools.
What are the rules?
It’s not easy doing careers film in imaginative and interesting new ways, but we’re confident that many of you are up to the challenge. The Careers category has slightly different rules to the rest of the SciCast competition. Your SciCast Future Morph films must:
- Show STEM knowledge or skills being used within a job
- Be no longer than three and a half minutes
- Not be boring
This category gives you a *whole extra minute* (SciCast Film rules are normally two and a half minutes***) to tell your careers story. You maybe won't need it, but keep it in your back pocket just in case.
Do note that the jobs you show do not have to be STEM jobs, you just have to show science being used in the job, whatever it is.
So: get your thinking caps on, and start dreaming up ways of revealing what people in the wider world do with their science and technology knowledge.
The deadline for submissions to the SciCast Awards is mid-April. The Awards Ceremony will be held shortly before the English and Welsh Summer break.
A handbook designed for teachers (“producers”) is available to download here and teaching resources can be downloaded here.
To find out more about SciCast and get involved building the world’s most entertaining science resource visit www.planet-scicast.com
