We’ll pretty this up a bit eventually, but for the moment here’s a plain old list of links to similar resources, things we like, and so on. Most of these are UK-relevant: please suggest additions and amendments.

Get Set Demonstrate

UK teachers – take the pledge to perform a demonstration to your students, on 20th March 2014!

• Get Set Demo site and pledge sign-up at the British Science Association.
• Demonstration CPD films on YouTube. (you’ll find teaching notes at the BSA page, above)
• The same demonstration CPD films and teaching notes at the National STEM Centre eLibrary. See below for some of our older, but still relevant, films there.

Science teaching

• Practical Work for Learning (Nuffield Foundation). Includes the film we made that’s also discussed in this post.
• The fine folks at the University of York Science Education Group have helped hone our views over the last few years. Keep up with their York Science project.
• The Science Learning Centres, CPD provision.
• National STEM Centre, the national resource centre to support science teaching. See in particular their Practical Work hub.
• National STEM Centre eLibrary, the web part of the physical centre. See in particular the Physics Demonstration Films.
• Search the STEM Directories for experiences and enrichment activities.
• Check the UK Association for Science & Discovery Centres for your nearest visitor centre. Most have extensive education programmes.

Science & demo video

• The Royal Institution’s RiChannel has a terrific selection of science video, of their own and from all over the web.
• We particularly like the films of Derek Muller (1Veritasium), Henry Reich (Minute Physics), Brady Haran (the camera behind Nottingham University’s Periodic Videos, Sixty Symbols and – our favourite – Numberphile), and Destin (Smarter Every Day).
• One of StoryCog’s previous projects, SciCast, has a few hundred films, mostly of demonstrations, mostly from school students, and mostly rather good.
• One of Alom’s previous projects addressed Why is science important?
• Obligatory commercial plug: we think StoryCog are really good at making films about practical science. Other stuff, too, but particularly demos.

Demos

It’s surprisingly tricky to find good resources on demonstrations. Which is… uh… why we started ScienceDemo.org.

• Arvind Gupta’s Toys from Trash is a remarkable and wonderful source of ideas.
• The Physics Demonstration Films at the aforementioned eLibrary seem to have been well received. We did those.
• Practical Physics, Chemistry and Biology are school-focussed resources, and mighty good. I wish they were better illustrated, however.
• The Exploratorium’s venerable Science Snacks are still a pretty good list.
• The Little Book of Experiments, which was compiled for Science Year back in the day, is perennially popular. [update Jan 2014: offline? Anyone know what’s happening to Planet Science? Is it dead?]

People, Places, Performers, shouts out

Educators, performers, associates, and people we think are plain lovely. Other nice people may also exist, E&OE, and all that.

• Alom Shaha, of this parish.
• Jonathan Sanderson, ibid.
• Dr. Paul McCrory, Learn Differently Ltd, Antrim – one of the absolute gurus of demonstration performance and teaching. We occasionally coax him into writing here.
• Festival of the Spoken Nerd – the outstanding Edinburgh Fringe show, touring the UK Jan-April 2014. Book soon!
• Other science performers and education providers we like: Matt Pritchard, Science Made Simple, Ken Farquhar, Camouflaged Learning. There are loads more – see the STEM Directories!
• Maker Faire UK will blow your mind – April 2014, at the incomparable Centre for Life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
• The British Science Association and the Royal Institution are both mad, bad, and dangerous to know.