For instance, one student with echolalia who would repeatedly type, “fruit fly” in the chat box. While some of the audience didn’t seem to pay me any attention, others were engaged, but showed it in a distracting way. I taught my audience about the charismatic animal, and received mixed responses. I use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to observe how the poisonous metal in our environment, methylmercury, is dangerous to growing muscles. I decided to focus the subject of the talk on the tool I use to do my research: the fruit fly. I was intimidated by the challenge and worried my toxicology work would not be understood by my audience. I had exactly zero experience with speaking to diverse audiences, so this was a big leap. My match with SaskAbilities gave me the opportunity to speak with an audience of adults with varying degrees of disability. From prior experiences, I felt comfortable with my communication skills, so I signed up for Skype a Scientist, and was matched in about a month. Science communication can be described as the practice of communicating scientific ideas to a general audience - in a “plainspoken” manner, if you fancy. I think that it is important for scientists to communicate with diverse audiences such as Sask students get a window into how the world works and scientists get a new audience to speak with. The experience was eye-opening I learned that my preconceived notion of “general audience” actually excluded a lot of people. The class is organized through SaskAbilities, which partnered with Skype-A-scientist to find me. I recently spoke about my science to a class of students with varying degrees of cognitive and intellectual disability.
0 kommentar(er)
