Microscopy Summer School for GCSE Students

The aims of this project are:
1. To provide GCSE-level students (15-18 years of age) from schools in underprivileged areas with experience in basic lab work, data processing and scientific writing. These skills are of vital importance to anyone interested in pursuing a scientific or technical career, and will also be of use during the students subsequent high school/college/university applications and careers. Basic training with image manipulation software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, CorelDraw and/or Illustrator will also be provided.
2. To provide an initiation into speaking in front of an audience, including basic training with Microsoft Powerpoint. Public speaking is a highly valued and important skill in many careers, and is manditatory during higher education.
2. To inspire these students to pursue a career in planetary sciences. Our target audience will be at the stage in their education when they begin to think about career options. With this Meteorites School we aim to provide unique and challenging work experience, involving exciting martian meteorite samples, to students who are often not provided with detailed career information.
3. To enable the students to produce physical evidence of their skills and abilities, in order to assist future University or job applications. Printed and bound project documents will provide an advantage during an interview situation.

We aim to raise awareness of the Meteorites School and disseminate examples of best practise by the following means:

1. Raise awareness during the Glasgow Science festival by disseminating leaflets advertising the Meteorites school, as well as application forms to those eligible.

2. Further raise awareness to the general public via the Glasgow University website news source (www.ges.gla.ac.uk:443/about/news) and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre news pages (www.gla.ac.uk/departments/suerc/news).

3. Liaise with high school teachers and advertise the Meteorites Scchool via STEMNET.

3. Give a presentation to University of Glasgow colleagues about the Meteorites School and the lessons learned, and take recommendations regarding the continuation of this project beyond the two year time scale.

4. Advertise the success of our project and disseminate best practice to the international science community by producing an abstract and poster about the Meteorites School at the Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, USA.