Prompted by @katiepiatt I signed up to be a STEM Ambassador, and rocked up to the induction session yesterday.
Basically being a STEM Ambassador sounds like ALL the fun bits I used to enjoy as a teacher, without any of the bother of admin, paperwork, assessment and class control.
There are nearly 30,000 STEM Ambassadors in the UK, 1100 in Sussex alone, and the Sussex folk undertook 700 activities last year, which culminate in a big Crawley STEMfest in June and July (and coveniently just down the road from me) and BIG BANG Sussex.
I went along to the induction feeling pretty full of myself (as per usual) and have to say I was pretty humbled by the stuff the other prospect-Ambassadors were into.
One guy had built the Olympics Velodrome, another worked on High Voltage systems across the South East, including giant wind turbines… I can code a little bit.
Anyway the CRB (or whatever it’s replacement is called) is underway, and in a few weeks I should be able to start volunteering. There’s a regular bi-weekly newsletter that identifies areas where schools want volunteers, and there are a couple of interesting antweight robotics sessions that are quite local. I haven’t built an ant weight since 2000, guessing the tech has changed a bit in the mean time.