Activity Title: Mentoring MyScience

About:

Different perspectives on the benefits of using a scientist mentor for participating MyScience students.

Video 1: Mentoring

Captions:

Music

Mentor: My name's Katrina and I was asked by Mr Fisk or

'Professor Fiskenhargenhoogenbargen' to be a mentor for one of the groups

in his class and I was involved for probably about a term helping the kids

fine tune their experiment and get things running and organised.

He asked me because I am a scientist myself, I did a Bachelor of Science

through university and I currently work in

the laboratory doing genetic testing.

So, I've got quite a few years experience in working with a

scientific method and playing around with scientific things, so.

I think just getting to share some of the excitement with the kids

like they were really enthusiastic and I think it's really good to see

that sort of excitement with them and that they were so keen

'Can I start my experiment, can I start my experiment'.

You know they were excited to be doing Science so I think to be able to

sort of be excited with them and about something that I'm

passionate about, it's really good.

Student: The scientists they help us with the scientific method

and helped us with just showing us an easier way

to get through the experiment.

Assistant Principal: Because there's only one of me and because

they're all doing different things generally teachers when they're

teaching Science will have everybody in the class doing the

same experiment or even if they're swapping around from one experiment

to another one then they'll all do that same experiment

so that the teacher can teach it 'This is what you're doing'.

Because everybody's doing something so vastly different they need to have

somebody guiding them on what they have to do.

And I just can't get around, I don't have the time to get around

ten groups that are in my class and sit down and suggest ways that they

might be able to improve their experiment or make sure that they've

got things and that sort of thing.

By having a mentor and in this case I used two people

from the school, one was a parent and one was the teacher librarian

who has a Science background, they were able to take a group at a time,

go through them, ask them what their suggestion was for an investigation,

ask them what they're planning to do, what they'll need,

all those sorts of things which I could do myself if I had more time

to be able to do it but it's just a time factor and having mentors

who understand how Science works and that I can communicate to

this is what the children need to do makes it so that,

there's like ten of me instead of just one of me.

And they can come in later and check how they're going and say

'Are you on track?'And 'What have you found out so far?'

And just makes it a lot easier.

Notes:

Mentors provide motivation as well as practical assistance to MyScience classes.