Two leading schools in the Faulkes Telescope Project have collaborated in a year long videoconferencing project on disease dynamics with a team of mathematicans and staff from the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University.
Simon Langton Grammar School for boys in Canterbury and West Monmouth School in Pontypool collected data from pupils in their feeder primary schools concerning how year groups mixed and how pupils interacted within classes. The data was then used by the schools to produce bar charts and network patterns, which for the first time revealed how pupils meet and interact in primary schools and produced the data needed to mathematically model how diseases are transmitted in primary schools and provided options for vaccinating a few key pupils when vaccines are in short supply.
The project involved Simon Langton and West Mon regularly conferencing together under the auspices of Cambridge University to plan the next step of the project and to report back. The project culminated in both schools traveling to Cambridge to give 15 minute presentations for each school as part of a 90 minute presentation by the research team to Phd students and invited guests. The presentation was introduced and summed up by Professor John Barrow FRS and both schools did superb presentations that were well received by the audience.
Due to the distance, West Mon pupils travelled to Cambridge the previous day and were rewarded for their efforts in the project by being given the chance to punt on the river Cam, with King's College Chapel providing the backdrop.
After the presention of Certificates and the end of their presentations, Simon Langton and West Mon pupils were given a tour of the Cavendish Laboratory and then a trip around the Institute of Astronomy to view their two historic telescopes.
West Mon's involvement in its videoconferencing ventures, came directly from its link to the Faulkes Telescope Project, when several years ago the Director of the Faulkes Telescope Project, Paul Roche put West Mon and three other schools in contact with Cambridge University to undertake an astronomical videoconferencing project with the Institute of astronomy at Cambridge. The project ran for two years with Dr. Jenny Gage facilitating the link via the Millenium Mathematics Project, which is a Cambridge University initiative. The first year's conferences concerned the solar system and the second year gave the schools an introduction to cosmology with Legal General providing funds to allow the ground breaking conferences to take place. West Mon also developed an international videoconferencing link with Thandokhulu school in South Africa during this time and the project was well supported by Torfaen LEA.
The Disease Dynamics project was funded by the Welcome Trust and West Mon School received a Royal Society Partnership Grant to help it take part. Both Simon Langton and West Mon pupils were shown around the Institute of Astronomy by Dr. Caroline Crawford. Caroline was already known to West Mon pupils because she had delivered the 'Introduction to Cosmology' conferences to West Mon, Whitchurch (another leading Faulkes Telescope school), Abersychan and Glan Hari schools the year before.
These projects provide enrichment to the curriculum of the schools involved and provide opportunities for pupils to sharpen up their presentation skills. It is good to see the two schools partaking in two such innovative schools projects in this way, which helps lay a path for education to follow in the 21st century.
Written by Kerry Pendergast (Faulkes Telescope Focus Group)
