Jo won the Cancer Zone in June 2010, here’s how she spent her winnings:
I have a confession to make. Spending the I’m a Scientist prize money took way longer, and was way harder than I ever thought it would be!
Since winning the money I have learnt that there is a lot more to creating teaching resources than I originally thought. I have spoken to teachers, other scientists and others about my idea of creating a teaching resource and how it could be used in schools. I have also discovered that there are people out there who are dedicated to creating teaching resources that are much better than I could make.
One of the great projects I discovered is the Millennium Mathematics Project, a maths education and outreach initiative for ages 3 to 19 and the general public. They provide educational activities and materials on a range of maths topics, including free online multi-media resource packs about ‘Maths and our Health’ and ‘Disease Dynamics”.
The resource packs they have created are so fantastic that I decided the best use of my prize money would be to help them to publicise the packs to schools across the country. They used the £500 to design and print promotional flyers and posters for their Maths and our Health resources. After sending some of the promotional materials out to schools they saw a substantial increase in people accessing the resource packs online. They hope that this will help even more students to develop an informed understanding of issues about health and medicine which feature prominently in the media and are likely to affect them personally.
Taking part in I’m a Scientist has led to me getting involved in science communication in a way I would never have had the confidence to do before. I’ve been to a workshop about online science communication and represented Cancer Research UK Science at a public event.
I think that, for me, the best thing to come out of taking part in I’m a Scientist was realising that my knowledge and experiences are worth sharing with people outside my department or scientific field. Chatting with students and thinking about the questions they asked was really inspiring and I hope that I’m a Scientist was my first step on a life-long commitment to getting the public involved in my work and in science in general.
