LCOGTN (almost) in Russia
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This week saw LCOGTN UK participating in two major events in the Russian capital, Moscow. Due to problems obtaining visas (don’t ask!), Paul Roche and Sarah Roberts were unable to actually travel out to Moscow, but the events that had been planned with the British Council Russia were carried out through video-conferencing.
On Tuesday evening, Paul gave a Science Café talk at the British Council offices in Moscow, on the topic of "Colonising Mars – could we, should we?". Over 40 people attended (over 100 had originally booked, but the necessity to use video-conferencing meant that a smaller venue had to be used), and the discussions lasted over 2 hours in total.
On Wednesday, the British Council had planned a day-long review of the pilot programme that has been running in Russia for the past year, involving 24 schools in 5 regions. The event was held at the prestigious Sternberg Astronomical Institute at Moscow State University, and included representatives from the other British Council astronomy programmes running in Poland (Lech Mankiewicz) and Portugal (Rosa Doran), as well as Dill Faulkes.
Lech worked wonders with the available technology, and Paul was able to "attend" the conference via the wonders of Skype web-casting (although at times things really were "lost in translation"!). After a series of presentations by teachers and students from the schools, Dill Faulkes presented prizes for the best work undertaken using FT North.
The afternoon was a brainstorming session and forward planning for the next years work, and a series of suggested international projects has been drawn up, involving collaborative science investigations between Russia, UK, US, Poland and Portugal.
