How to get more people in the community interested in math and science?

[twofish-quant]

Why not run an evening class? Start at the easiest level - maybe with "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson?

Or take a camera and post some lectures on youtube.

Then again, you seem to be doing very well at getting professors together to give lectures! Sounds like you should aim to be head of science broadcasting at one of the big TV companies... get everyone thinking...

Big TV companies are dinosaurs. Television is fast becoming obsolete, and I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now people in college have no idea what television is. I don't own a TV. I have a big LCD screen in my living room which I can connect to a cable tuner or stream stuff from the internet.

It's a quite exciting time because there is all this new technology and we are learning all of these new thing that will be obvious to people.

One of the more interesting things I've noticed with effective lectures (Vi Hart or Khan Academy or Plinkett's reviews) is don't show the face of the person that is broadcasting. You point the camera at the image and then make that the center of the lecture. The other thing is that you can focus on a piece of paper and have the lecture be someone drawing something.

 

[mal4mac]

Or take a camera and post some lectures on youtube.
Big TV companies are dinosaurs. Television is fast becoming obsolete

Have you any evidence to show this? Even radio seems far from obsolete, to me:

"In Our Time [BBC Radio 4] ... now enjoys an audience of two million for live discussions about topics from string theory to Arabic learning from the 8th to the 14th centuries"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/melvyn-bragg-written-world

This is a UK programme, 2 million is about 3% of the population!

 

[chiro]

Have you any evidence to show this? Even radio seems far from obsolete, to me:

"In Our Time [BBC Radio 4] ... now enjoys an audience of two million for live discussions about topics from string theory to Arabic learning from the 8th to the 14th centuries"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/melvyn-bragg-written-world

This is a UK programme, 2 million is about 3% of the population!

I agree with twofish-quant is becoming obsolete.

There are way too many incentives to use mediums like the internet (ala Youtube and so on) over TV and like twofish-quant, I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes obsolete either in a little more than a decade.

Just for your own curiosity, you should ask if people have stopped or slowed down their TV usage (broadcast channels) over the years: the people I have known (including me) have basically given away their TV's unless they use them specifically to watch DVD's or play video games: not too watch broadcast channels.

 

[Nano-Passion]

Or take a camera and post some lectures on youtube.

That isn't a bad idea.

Why not run an evening class? Start at the easiest level - maybe with "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson? The point is, surely, to get people appreciating science, not try to turn them all into scientists. Bryson would be quite good as (i) they might have heard of him (ii) he isn't a science whiz, so they can identify with him...

Then again, you seem to be doing very well at getting professors together to give lectures! Sounds like you should aim to be head of science broadcasting at one of the big TV companies... get everyone thinking...

Have you come across the BBC Radio 4 programme "In Our Time", headed by Melvyn Bragg? He gets three professors together each week to talk about one big person/topic like "Benjamin Franklin" or "Electricity". Maybe you could do that on campus? Is there a campus radio? Or you could do it in a lecture hall... If you can't get professors, just play one of Melvyn's programmes and have a discussion session after them...

Another good BBC programme is "The Life Scientific", headed by by Jim Al Khalili. Here he interviews a top scientist each week about his life and work. Very inspiring. (Paul Nurse was very good recently...)

Bragg and Al Khalili are, like Bryson, top of the game, so you can learn a lot by seeing how they get difficult ideas across to the public.

I would love to be the head of science broadcasting--but doing theoretical physics has become a very personal goal for me. Understanding reality is starting to become almost of an obsession. Which is why reaching out and communicating to the community about science is a side-goal.

Unfortunately, we don't have a campus radio. It would have been a pleasant idea to get those two programmes to play on campus.