Paul Curzon - Public Engagement Champion via CS4FN
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: Sch of Electronic Eng & Computer Science
Abstract
This programme will support Prof Paul Curzon to act as an ICT public engagement champion. It will (1) turn UK teachers into local ICT research engagement champions within their schools by empowering them to act as intermediaries (2) build a pipeline of engagement with UK ICT research from primary school onwards by working with children directly, and indirectly through their teachers, to inspire them about ICT research, and (3) deeply embed public engagement in the research culture of ICT researchers to feed the pipeline via a community of practice. An explicit focus will be to emphasise the diversity of computer scientists and the wide-ranging ICT research that they do, both in the UK and beyond, and the diversity of new and future job roles that use ICT, directly or otherwise. We will build upon our existing CS4FN family of public engagement vehicles to do this: a key aspect is to scale up our pilot work with primary schools.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Paul Curzon (Principal Investigator) |
| Title | Colour-in mini Christmas zine from CS4FN |
| Description | A foldable paper zine with computing-themed puzzles and Christmas-themed pictures to colour in, for kids at home or in school. The product can be used as just a fun thing to colour in and complete puzzles, but can also be used to talk about some computer science, e.g. logical strategies deployed to solve the puzzles. There are two versions, one A4 for UK printers and a resized version for US letter size printers. This product was inspired by the popularity of colouring in pages on Etsy, in particular 'colouring in placemats' used to keep younger children occupied at the dinner table. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The zine has been downloaded 70 times from our website; it was also uploaded to TES where it has been downloaded another 50 times. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/colour-in-mini-christmas-zine-from-cs4fn/ |
| Title | Encrypted deckchairs (and More Encrypted Deckchairs) |
| Description | Inspired by NASA's "Dare Mighty Things" message woven covertly into Perseverance's parachute, these creative 'makes' for home or the classroom illustrate the principle of steganography, through stripey steganography (there is a message in the stripes in the deckchair). This was created by a QMUL colleague, Ho Huen (who also created video instructions), in consultation with Curzon and Brodie. "Encrypted deckchairs" is an origami deckchair + sun lounger project, which also includes a blank file for readers to create their own message. "More encrypted deckchairs" is a follow-on project in which a deckchair is made from craft and cocktail sticks. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The deckchair files have been downloaded over 100 times. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/2022/07/04/encrypted-deckchairs/ |
| Description | PECS mailing list (Jiscmail) |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| URL | https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PECS |
| Description | PEEECS Internal Group and public website |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| URL | https://peeecs.wordpress.com/ |
| Description | RI |
| Organisation | The Royal Institution of Great Britain |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Curzon has given a series of masterclasses and summer schools for the Ri both at the RI and elsewhere as well as stepping in at short notice when others have dropped out. We have run an RI masterclass series at QMUL. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The RI has provided a representative on the advisory panel and we have had separate discussions on ways forward. They provide organisational support and recruitment as well as rooms, allowing Curzon to engage with a wide variety of diverse school children and focus just on workshop development and delivery. While we had worked with the RI before which led to the collaboration on the grant, the grant has allowed us to increase the mutual support and number of workshops delivered. This has included developing a new careers inspired usability consultant workshop |
| Impact | RI/ QMUL Masterclasses Workshops for a non-academic audience (various) - Ones listed as RI-linked. QMUL / RI Masterclasses |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | 'Techy talks' listing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | There are a number of computing-themed talks, events and workshops happening online, in London or beyond that may be suitable for a school or general public audience, as well as of interest to teachers. The listing is a blog post, published every couple of months, with a round-up of suitable events that are coming up (the post is shared on Twitter and elements also incorporated into the next newsletter). The listing is also shared on the PECS Jiscmail mailing list. The intentions behind the listing format are to showcase a variety of events (and the venues which host them), to help teachers hear about events which might be suitable for their pupils to attend, or for the teacher to attend and discuss with pupils, and also to showcase further examples of public engagement with computing research to the PECS group. Academic seminars are largely excluded from the listing (unless the information specifically states that it's also suitable for a non-academic audience). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/techy-talks-for-non-techy-people-public-engagement-with-computer... |
| Description | CS4FN magazine issue 28 - Cunning Computational Contraptions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This issue focused on the history of computer science and computational devices and creating the online version was part-funded by EP/K040251/2 (Ursula Martin). The magazine had additional contributions from Ursula Martin and Adrian Johnstone. This grant supported creating and distributing the physical copies. 21,000 printed copies of the magazine were sent to >2,400 subscribing UK computer science school teachers, librarians and home educators, with numbers varying between 1 (e.g. a home educator or for a school library) and 200; the most popular request is for a class set of 30. Copies of the magazine were also given away at a professional event held as part of the Imagining AI exhibition at Oxford University https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/imagining-ai organised by Ursula Martin and colleagues. At time of writing (8 March 2023) PDF copies of the magazine have been downloaded from our download site 394 times in 2022 and 68 times in 2023 (462), however the magazine is also available in web-form on our CS4FN website, with individual articles republished as blog posts. The landing page (portal) for the issue has been visited 341 times, https://cs4fn.blog/cunningcontraptions/ We also make the magazine available to our undergraduates and postgraduate students as well as visitors tot he department, and we give out copies at talks/workshops. Informal feedback indicates that teachers enjoy using CS4FN magazines in a variety of ways: leaving for pupils to read as a non-fiction resource, photocopying article for discussion in class or using articles as a springboard to teach about computer science research directly as well as teaching about or reinforcing the wider themes (ethics, diversity, that the topic has a history, that computing touches all areas of our lives even if we don't all become programmers etc). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/issue-28-cunning-computational-contraptions/ |
| Description | Diversity Day By Day portal |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is one of our thematic portals focusing on Diversity (a major strand of our grant) and contains a mix of new content and links to previously published content on the CS4FN blog. This is a recently-begun, longer-term project which is both a novel way of highlighting the many different backgrounds of computer scientists and also lets us tap into the popularity of the 'On This Day In History' style of sharing information in its historical context. We are continuing to add to this so its initial presentation is sparse however the project has had 80 views so far. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/diversity-day-by-day/ |
| Description | Festival of Communities 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Festival of Communities is an annual event organised by QMUL's Centre for Public Engagement (Platinum Engage Watermark from NCCPE) in which all departments across the university participate, in partnership with the borough of Tower Hamlets. Curzon and Brodie ran a stall in June 2022 (Curzon also ran a separate workshop, see Workshops section), engaging with visiting families about computer science research. We hosted a number of fun activities including close-up table magic illustrating the links between magic and computer science, colouring in (making a half-human, half-computer 'cyborg' hat) and Pixel Puzzles. We also gave away lots of free material to primary and secondary-aged children and their families and chatted with them about computing stories in the news, and answered their questions. We hope to do something very similar at the 2023 festival. We also had with us a 3rd year undergraduate student as a helper and we got her involved in doing some of the magic tricks and explaining the science, and engaging with families too. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/05/25/colour-in-a-computer-and-see-the-magic-of-computer-sc... |
| Description | Foreign language translations of our classroom activities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We are regularly contacted by people who wish to translate our material into other languages and most recently in 2023 three of our activities have been translated into Dutch. We have a dedicated page for foreign language editions where copies of our translated material can be found. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/interdisciplinary-computational-thinking/computing-and-language/ |
| Description | Portals on the CS4FN blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We have created a number of curated portals on our blog / website to help readers access our information organised by topic, and to increase usefulness for calendar events. This also lets us re-surface older posts by linking them together thematically with others, into a single themed page (which we can share on Twitter, in addition to individual posts). We are explicitly creating diversity portals as part of our diversity programme. The full set of portals created during the project are listed individually below, also found here https://cs4fn.blog/portals/ June 2022 Computer science in space: https://cs4fn.blog/computer-science-in-space/ Victorian computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/victorian-computer-science/ - interdisciplinary portal with history July 2022 Wearable computing and fashion: https://cs4fn.blog/wearable-computing-and-fashion/ Lego computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/lego-computer-science/ Dec 2022 Natural language processing: https://cs4fn.blog/natural-language-processing/ Mini beasts and computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/mini-beasts-and-computer-science/ Christopher Strachey: https://cs4fn.blog/christopher-strachey/ - also part of our LGBTQ+ portal Jan 2023 Alan Turing: https://cs4fn.blog/alan-turing/ - also part of our LGBTQ+ portal LGBTQ+ Computer Science Greats: https://cs4fn.blog/lgbtq-computer-science-greats/ - ready for LGBT History Month in February Feb 2023 Diversity Day By Day: https://cs4fn.blog/diversity-day-by-day/ March 2023 For teachers we've created two Women portals (for International Women's Day). One on the Teaching London Computing website https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/women/ and another on our downloads site which gathers all our free material relating to Women in Computing https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/women/. We've also created one for students https://cs4fn.blog/the-women-are-still-here/ Combined, the portal pages have been viewed over 600 times - this includes the post-June 2022 viewing figures for Cunning Computational Contraptions (the page was set up before EPSRC funding began, https://cs4fn.blog/cunningcontraptions/ ready for the magazine being distributed on the grant). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/portals/ |
| Description | QMUL / Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 15 school students from diverse backgrounds, selected by their teachers, attend six Saturday morning workshops in the department to learn about computer science research beyond their curriculum, in partnership with the Royal Institution. Curzon was invited (initially in 2015) to support the Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science programme by hosting a series at QMUL and we continued to do these. However the activity was stopped in 2020-2022 because of Covid. The grant has supported us in restarting the programme with Brodie part of the organising team in 2023. Curzon presented in 2023 on artificial intelligence. These are hugely popular sessions and feedback is excellent. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Talks for a non-academic audience (various) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Curzon is regularly asked to speak at events for teachers and school events. Talks since the project began and supported by it include - • Friday 10th June 2022: Human Error and the Illusion of Good Medical Device Design An online talk given to approx 100 older secondary school pupils and their teachers, for the Barts and Queen Mary Virtual Festival https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/the-illusion-of-good-medical-device-design/ • Tuesday 28 June 2022: Digital Schoolhouse An in-person talk for teachers on "Semantic Waves and Teaching Computing Unplugged" with an example of unplugged activities (eg Create A Face) that teachers might use in their classroom to teach computing concepts https://twitter.com/dunoongs/status/1541724546809692160 (includes brief video of the session). • Thursday 30 June 2022: TCS Digital Explorers An online talk given to approx 100 Y10 - Y12 students and their teachers as part of a careers event organised by TATA Consultancy Services https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/06/10/tcs-digital-explorers-2022-y10-y11-y12-teachers-free-tech-careers-event-27-30-june-with-tcs-paul-curzon-cs4fn-speaking-on-30-june-jb/ • Wednesday 6 July 2022 - Isaac Discovery Day event: Humans and Machines Isaac Computer Science held an in-person discovery day for 100 A level students at QMUL and Paul was the keynote speaker giving a talk on good medical device design and human computer interaction. • Saturday 25 February 2023 - invited keynote talk - This was an invited keynote talk (detailed in Awards section) Organisers from the "I Love Computing 2023" STEM Learning conference asked Curzon to give a talk at the event, for 126 teachers. His talk, on Christopher Strachey's programmed love poems included a workshop element where teachers created their own poetry supported LGBTQ+ month. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| Description | Teaching London Computing - Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is a regular newsletter emailed to our subscribing UK computer science school teachers (primary or secondary). Informal feedback includes people sending thanks, forwarding to colleagues who then ask to be subscribed. People also suggest items for inclusion. The content typically includes information about CPD courses or workshops, events that are about (or adjacent) to computing research that teachers might like to attend themselves, or might take their pupils to. A number of these events will have been blogged on the Teaching London Computing website, so the newsletter gathers them together and adds anything new. Some of the workshops or talks are organised externally, some are our own. The November 2022 newsletter in particular included a recommended book list for A level students thinking about taking up computer science at university as well as a focus on Christmas-and-Computing-themed activities that teachers could deploy in the week before schools break up. These activities are designed to be fun first and foremost but which also give the opportunity to talk about certain aspects of computer science, or to draw links and parallels with computing themes. Also included was a link to a website where we are collecting permanently searchable and browsable copies of job descriptions and person specifications for jobs in computer science and jobs that use computer science skills (intended as a sort of horizon-scanning / situational awareness of the computing job market for careers discussions about 'what's out there' and what skills are needed). A copy of the newsletter is also placed on our public website increasing its reach. Periodically the collection of newsletters (and the interim blog posts that feed into it) is used as a marketing tool to increase our subscribers' list. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/11/14/teaching-london-computing-newsletter-11-november-2022... |
| Description | TechDev Jobs website - a repository of information about digital jobs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The website is a collection of job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications for a selection (currently just over 40) of 'tech' and tech-adjacent jobs including software engineering, data analysis, web development, IT support etc. The idea is to provide anyone interested with a curated, time-saving, 'ready to print' way of showcasing the range of different types of jobs and the different types of organisation and sector that digital and other skills (sociotechnical). As the information is stored on the website itself it's accessible beyond the short timeframe in which a job is advertised. Although the website was initially created before EPSRC funding began we are also now using this site in the project to support the careers programme. We have created a page (linked below) that organises the jobs by sector (universities, health charities, journalism, community groups etc) and are now actively sharing the website with teachers through our own newsletter and via the CAS (Computing At School) forums. Brodie was also asked to write a blog post about the resource for the CAS (Computing At School) website https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/news-and-blogs/2023/february/free-collection-of-job-ads-andjds-and-pss-for-computingplus-jobs |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://techdevjobs.wordpress.com/jobs-organised-by-sector-theme/ |
| Description | The CS4FN blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is primarily a blog website which publishes medium-length articles about (1) computer science research, (2) computer science topics and (3) computer scientists (people) (4) computer science history, written in our CS4FN-style, aimed at a school-age audience and teachers. The aim is to provide reading material covering the full range of the computer science discipline as a research topic, school subject and hobby / entertainment. It is also a primary way we engage teachers with research topics. The blog posts can be used in different ways: for general interest and informing about a particular aspect of research or a particular topic, use as a springboard to discuss a topic in class (e.g. the dark side of algorithms), highlighting the sheer variety of subtopics within the genre of computer science and the variety of people who 'do' it. We're also sharing our own enthusiasm for the topic. There are also static pages (portals) which focus on a particular theme, such as diversity, LGBTQ+ computer scientists and the use of Lego as a learning (and teaching) tool. The portals are expanded on as a separate engagement activity submission. We are in the process of reposting as blog posts articles from our original CS4FN website as a way to resurface our back catalogue including from the original EPSRC cs4fn grant, as well as writing new content. Some of the newer articles will also become published in a later edition of the CS4FN magazine. All blog posts and themed pages are tweeted and our tweets are regularly liked, commented on and retweeted by teachers. Visitor numbers and views since the project began are below (views in brackets) Q1 June-Aug 2022: 1,031 (1,872) Q2 Sep-Nov 2022: 1,191 (2,003) Q3 so far Dec 2022-Feb 2023: 1,549 (3,071) <-- this includes December which is generally our most popular month [Q4 so far Mar-May 2023: not yet available] The majority of our visitors are from the UK (2,000+), with the US coming second (1,000+). We have visitors from many countries with India, Canada and European countries typically sending 100+ visitors. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/ |
| Description | Workshops for a non-academic audience (various) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Curzon is regularly asked to run unplugged computing and other workshops (including magic shows about computing) for families. • Saturday 11 June 2022: Workshop at QMUL's Festival of Communities An interactive fun family magic show for approx 30 people in Tower Hamlets Park, demonstrating how magic is linked to computer science and how magicians and computer scientists actually think alike. QMUL's Festival of Communities is a two-day engagement event. On the first day QMUL staff go into the community and put on an event in the park, on the second day we invite the community to come to QMUL with events on campus. • Tuesday 14 June 2022: Magic show workshops at Chingford C of E School Two in-person workshops / magic shows about the Magic of Computer Science for 60 pupils. • Saturday 18 June 2022: workshop at Gladesmore Community School / Ri Masterclass The Royal Institution hosts Ri Masterclasses at a variety of locations. Curzon was asked to step in at the last moment to give his magic workshop (an older version of that above), for approx 14 young teenagers. • Monday 15th, Tuesday 16th and Monday 22nd August: six workshops at the Royal Institution Curzon was invited to give six workshops to groups of families as part of the Ri's Holiday Workshop programme. He gave three different workshops twice on each day, one for children aged 7-9 and one for 10-12 year olds. Approximately 80 people attended (combined). - The magic of computer science x2 - AI, but where's the intelligence? x2 - Becoming a usability expert: Why are gadgets so hard to use? x2 https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/08/08/paul-curzons-doing-some-holiday-workshops-for-young-people-ri_science/ • Saturday 21 January 2023: workshop at Gladesmore Community School / Ri Masterclass An AI workshop for approximately 20 teenagers. • Saturday 4 March 2023: QMUL / Ri Masterclass in Computer Science - see the Ri Masterclasses section. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |