Demonstrating the Faraday 08 website

You can choose which topic to demonstrate. We have chosen ‘Nature reinvented’ as an example.

Step 1 – before the students arrive

Try and arrange it with the contact teacher that you can have five minutes to set up the computer.

Open up these five screens [hold down the 'Ctrl' (PC) or 'Command' (Mac) key while using your mouse to select the links below]:

1) Other organ challenge from the ‘Nature reinvented section.

2) Bionic Games game from the ‘Nature reinvented’ section.

3) The fourth question from the Nature reinvented quiz.

4) The second piece of film (about four minutes in, at the second appearance of Dr. Jack) in the Nature reinvented home section.

5) The Faraday 08 homepage; keep this as the foreground window.

Once the students are all in, play the first piece of film from the Home page. This will settle them down and introduce them to the character of Dr. Jack.

Then introduce yourself. Say who you are and explain a little about your professional career but keep it short; there will be opportunities for longer explanations later. It may help students if you write your name on the board.

Then introduce the website. Explain how the site has four main topics concerned with biomedical engineering and that you are going to focus on one of them.

Showing a film extract

By way of example, we have selected the second extract in the ‘Nature reinvented film which focuses on extendable implants. It can be found about five minutes in and begins with Dr. Jack saying:

“Tissue engineering has the potential to revolutionise healthcare…”.

(We have chosen this extract simply because we think students will be engaged by the sight of Ryan growing but you may feel more comfortable choosing another extract.)

All the films are fast-paced and show how fascinating biomedical engineering can be. However, if you give students specific things to look for before they begin watching an extract, there is less chance that they will just sit there and let it wash over them.

An immediately engaging technique is to pose a relevant question. For example, you could ask:

“Does anybody know what a prosthesis is?”

This will help set the scene and could even lead to further questions and/or a mini-discussion, such as:

“Does anyone here have one or do you know anybody that has one?” or “What do you think they are made of?”

You could then take this further by informing how they watch the extract:

“We’re going to see a piece of film now about how some prosthetics are made. It lasts about six minutes. As you watch, see if you find the answers to the following questions:

“How much is the young boy, Ryan, going to grow?” (answer: 4mm)

“What is Ryan 'not' able to do?” (answer: trampolining, bouncing on settees, jumping)

“How long did it take the engineers to develop the implant?” (answer: 10 years).

After having shown the extract, you can ask the students the questions a second time and invite them to call out the answers. Use each answer as a trigger for a mini-discussion.

A further means of engaging the students while simultaneously providing an opportunity for them to reflect upon what they have just seen would be to run an extract from the topic’s quiz.

Running a quiz

You could introduce this activity by explaining that there are several quizzes within the website that students may wish to explore with their teachers. However, for now, you are going to run a quick mini-quiz to see what else they have learnt from the film.

Open the Nature reinvented quiz page from the Students’ menu. Questions 4 – 8 refer to the extract of film that you have just shown.

As the answers are multiple choice, you could invite students to call the answers out or distribute pens and paper and invite them to work in pairs. They could then swap with another pair to mark their answers out of five.

Playing the game

As Richard Hirons says at the start of the next extract of film:

“The word ‘bionics’ is a combination of two words. It’s ‘biology’ and ‘electronics’ and that makes ‘bionics’.”

That sentence would be a good link into a short demonstration of the ‘Bionic Games’ game.

You could read out the text on the first panel (from “With just two days… to …and recreate the alloy”) with a suitably dramatic ‘mission brief’ tone of voice.

You could then invite one of the students (ideally a girl, if available) to read the next panel.

When you have entered ‘the lab’, click on the three circles in the top right-hand corner of the screen and explain briefly their purpose:

• Turned page icon: highlights the tensile strength and elasticity of each of the six alloys
• Book icon – explains the mathematical rules for combining alloys
• Sharna icon – outlines some of the key properties of Buffonium

If students are working around computers, you could invite them to play the game in small groups.

If you are demonstrating from the front, you could invite students up to test alloys in the smelter and invite their classmates to call out advice about which combination of alloys to choose.

(Sharna can win with a limb made from Chuffinel and Faradite T9 but can break the record running on a leg made of Chuffinel and Bovar.)

You can tell students that there is more interesting information on the ‘Discover more’ page in each section. This might come in handy when they are working on the challenges.