Declan who has a background in HTML, CSS, PHP and Mysql setup the Coderdojo last Saturday. Over 100 students attend three sessions. The first two where based on Scratch and were given by Brendan Smith from the Galway Coderdojo. Scratch is a very simple why to get young kids into code by draging and droping code. The last session was for older more advanced students and we started we codeacedemy and vpython but we hope to move on to develop games and apps for the Android phones.

The Coderdojo is on every second Saturday for 11:30 to 4pm in the Mayo Education Centre Castlebar.
If you are interested in coming email Declan on

In Sept, Anthony Caldwell of Science Ireland completed his MPhil in Information Systems in Queens University Belfast on students attitudes to online education based on our website physics.ie. In the same month, we published an article in Physics Education, an Institute of Physics peer-reviewed journal, on a simple method of reproducing Joule’s experiment on heat.

For science week we developed “Battleship Maths” as part of the RDS Science Live lecture series, which showed students the practical application of maths by launching projectiles to hit a target. Also during science week, we created our new Science Fair show for national schools, the Science Fair gets everyone in the schools involved in science for the day.

In Dec 2011, we tested our Physics Problem Solving Workshop, which is a half day transition year module to explore students abilities to work on physics problems and to encourage the uptake in Leaving Certificate physics.

Looking forward to 2012, we hope to continue publishing articles as well as online content to help teachers and students with STEM subjects. We will complete the Physics Problem Solving Workshop and offer it to schools who need to keep the numbers doing physics up. According to the Institute of Physics, in 2011, only 11% of students took Leaving Certificate physics and 25% of schools do not offer physics as a choice. This is a worrying trend but we are confident that with our new method of teaching physics this trend can be reversed.

Happy New Year and we are all looking forward to 2012, where Dublin will host the City of Science festival, which will bring educators and researchers from around the world to Dublin.

We wish everyone a great Science Week and encourage all ages to get out to these great science events.

Battleship Maths is a game where students will use trigonometry, co-ordinate geometry and physics to destroy the opponents ships. Battleship Maths has been accepted for the RDS Science Live Lecture Series and will be launched for Science Week 2011.

There will be two fleets of battleships, the science fleet and maths fleet. The names of the battleships will be named after famous scientists and mathematicians e.g. LE Boyle, LE Hamilton. The battleships will work together to destroy the other fleet.

The room will be laid out in two grids with a low screen between the grids. The battleships will be represented by a large bucket that will serve as a target, it needs to be deep to stop the ping pong balls bouncing out. Each battleship team will have a launcher and two theodolites (to measure angles). Students will not be able to see the opponent battleships directly but there will be a tall flag in each battleship which teams can use to measure angles.

Students will work in teams of six, two will deal with the launcher, one angle and one force, two will measure distance to target by measuring angles and using maths to determine distance. The other team members will decide strategy such as the speed/direction of the battleship and talking to the fleet.

The students will build a projectile launcher and then calibrate it to determine the launch speed of the projectile in this case a ping pong ball. The launcher will use a simple elastic band launch system. Once the students have built and calibrated their launcher they must find the best angle and speed to hit a target area.

The second part is to understand how to determine the distance to the target. This is accomplished by two team members one standing at the location of the battleship and one standing at the edge of the grid. They can measure the distance between them off the grid and then they both measure the angle between them and the opponent flag. Once the two angles and the distance between them are found the distance to target can be calculated by using trigonometry.

The game will have several rounds and the game will end if one fleet is destroyed or the time runs out, in this case the fleet with the most intact battleships will win.

Castlebar’s Maths Academy has been set up to help students, to excel at maths in both pass and higher level. The Academy does not take the form of grinds but instead is an accessible and enjoyable way of learning maths which involves problem solving and interaction with other students.

The Academy is run by Declan Holmes of Science Ireland who has over 15 years of experience of supporting Leaving Certificate students in both maths and science. The course covers the new “Project Maths” syllabus as well as focusing on Leaving Certificate questions.

This method has proven very popular with students at both pass and honours level as it builds their confidence over time by focusing on specific issues that students find difficult and working through these at their pace. The students work together in small groups, which aids learning and most importantly gives the students a repeatable method for problem solving which they can use in their exams.

The Academy will also present “Learn the Application of Maths” nights which will help students understand how maths relates to their everyday world.

The Maths Academy meets each Wednesday from 4.45 – 7pm in the Celtic Football Ground Clubhouse Meeting Room beside the Castlebar County Library and the first session is free. For more information call 087 9176292.

The shows are a great success with the latest of our shows in development at the moment, Battleship Maths is a interactive  game where students use maths to measure distance to target and use physics to launch projectiles to win the game. Battleship Maths will be launched on the Monday of Science Week 2011 in the RDS, Dublin.