Diary Entry - May

When May started we were engaged in all kinds of activities relating to primates and how to study them. We had a session on primate foods and we looked at the importance of a balanced diet to primates just as we need a balanced diet. We were able to research different primates using the internet to find out the kinds of foods they liked. We then looked at examples of these different foods to understand what nutrients were in them such as carbs, fats, and proteins. This led to a primate food tasting session including green leaves, legumes, figs and insects… yes insects. The students were able to taste giant crickets and grasshoppers, cooked mealworms, and ant biscuits. We sweetened the activity using a chocolate fondue but even this couldn’t impress some of the students who refused to try them and some of those who did weren’t sure they were enjoying the taste. Even though the thought of eating insects didn’t inspire some of the students the session was a massive hit with some fantastic footage for the video diary and some interesting reactions.

We followed up this tasty experience by linking it to the science of nutrition and energy. The following week we had a session on calorimetry. Students were able to burn different samples of foods eaten by humans or primates (insects, banana, legumes, “monkey-chow” which was actually breakfast cereal). The food was burnt under a sample of water and we used the temperature change of the water to calculate the amount of energy in each food type. The objective of this session was two-fold. The introduction to the session required the students to plan the practical identifying independent, dependent and control variables exactly as is expected in real scientific experiments. The calculations showed students the application of mathematics as part of the principle of the STEM club. The students showed that the mealworms and the “monkey-chow” contained a lot of energy for the same weight of other foods.

We also did a session on photography in preparation for the return visit to Chester Zoo. On the first visit many of the students produced poor quality photos, which were not really usable for any purpose, scientific or artistic. We therefore had a session on the skills of taking photographs and discussed the importance for science research of doing photography to help catalogue animals being studied. We are intending on having a photography competition in June with photographs the students have taken. The best photographs will be blown-up and displayed around the school to reinforce awareness of the STEM project in the school, other photographs will be given to the art department to be used as resources for future art projects.

As the deadline for the “Project” video submission approached, our project was really getting into full swing. With some difficulties in the zoo with getting our devices in with the mandrills, we were cutting it close to get in the final visit to the zoo in time. The zoo had underestimated the size of the devices we were giving them and had problems suspending the feeders in the enclosure. This meant that the roof of the mandrill enclosure needed structurally reinforcing to be strong enough to support the four different feeders we had built. This prevented us from starting the observations of the mandrills with the feeders in place until very late in the month. On the 19th of May we returned to the zoo to make observations of the mandrills using our feeders.

The visit to the zoo involved many things. The first thing was a mini-workshop on photography to recap everything the students had learnt the week before. It was also useful to discuss photography with the subject matter in front of us. The students were then allowed all day to take any photographs that would then be entered into the photography competition. Through interviews over the day, a lot of students were asked to comment on the project as a whole to see whether the success criteria of the project had been achieved and whether the students had been enthused by an applied approach to the STEM subjects.

In the afternoon the primate keepers installed our devices in the enclosure and let the Mandrills in to check them out. The response from the pupils was fantastic as they begged the mandrills to pull the ropes and turn the wooden blocks. The mandrills behaved even more fantastically than the students showing immediate interest in our feeders. It was clear they didn’t understand what to do and were both curious and nervous at the same time. As their bravery increased they began by pushing and biting the feeders, testing them to workout what they were. Then an eureka moment, as nuts came tumbling out of one of the rotational feeders one of the mandrills had unintentionally turned. It appeared quite clear that an understanding had been made that manipulating the blocks meant food spilled out as the mandrill quickly set about turning all the blocks dispensing even more food.

The feedback from the zoo staff and Dr. Sean O’Hara, our university researcher, was extremely positive. The feeders had not been solved easily but the mandrills had managed to get food out of both types whether they knew how they had done it or not. This is a very promising start to Sean’s research study which will now carry on for the next few months. He will then work with us at the school to produce a set of results to show the impact the feeders have had on the mandrill behaviour. This means our research will be carrying on into June and July. Although the end of the Rolls-Royce Science Prize is upon us, our progress so far is only the ground work for the larger project of proving, through scientific observation and maths analysis, that enrichment is beneficial to captive primates.

The dream result for all of us will be to produce publications that support the positive impact this project has had on both primate and student. We hope to demonstrate to the scientific community that we have enriched the lives of these primates and we hope to demonstrate to the educational community that STEM is an effective way of educating students in the core STEM subjects (enriching the lives of our students). A pupil voice questionnaire has been used to see this impact in our students. The majority of the activities attempted this year have proven to be very useful and interesting in the opinion of the students. A few activities have proven not to be very interesting but the majority of students have acknowledged that valuable skills have been learnt in these tasks including the use of ICT, team working and problem solving.

The students mostly enjoyed seeing their product in use at the end of the project as well as eating the insects. The general feeling has been that an applied approach with students actually contributing to science rather than repeating other people’s work has been a major success. The strongest and most impressive result from the analysis of the student voice has been that 100% of the students felt the project had been successful. Significantly for the STEM team, a number of students said that this project had increased their interest in science and has made them want to study science beyond GCSE, however, this figure was not as high for students wanting a career in science. Through discussion in the STEM team and with a few of the students this statistic may be the result of students having limited knowledge of what sort of jobs they could do that involve science.

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