FLEET Schools is a resource for primary and secondary teachers and students to engage with physics and chemistry, and to learn and think about the research problems FLEET is working on. That problem is our ever increasing energy requirements coming from our for rapidly increasing computation demand. Think Internet of Things, AI, driverless cars, smart phones and gaming. To solve this FLEET is conducting research to develop the next generation of energy-efficient electronics. FLEET schools has curriculum-linked teacher resources on a range of topics; in-person or online workshops for your class/school and tours of FLEET’s labs that include time for some fun hands-on science stuff. In Home Science, the button “Activities w Teacher resources” will take you to the activities that have curriculum-linked activities, worksheets and critical thinking exercises. They are downloadable. There is an ever-expanding range of home science stuff you can have fun with anytime, anywhere. Check out our Ask the Physicists Facebook page where we post new ideas and activities/resources and you can let us know how the activities or resources worked for you. Any feedback can help us improve how we can engage students with physics and STEM and to think critically about how society should use scientific knowledge.
School teacher resources
FLEET is developing a series of curriculum-aligned teacher/student resources with extensive background information, hands-on and critical thinking activities, slides and worksheets. See links to resources below
FLEET outreach impact
Over the years, FLEET has conducted a variety of outreach events with schools and the general public. Most of the events were evaluated using pre- and post-evaluation methods to understand the impact of the event relative to our strategic goals.
Did we achieve our strategic goals. The short answer is yes. For detailed reports on all our outreach activities head to our FLEET outreach impact page.
School incursions, excursion
Excursion: If you would like to arrange a visit or lab tour to a FLEET facility, please contact education@fleet.org.au with your preferred date and time.
Incursion: FLEET has research nodes in Melbourne (Monash, RMIT and Swinburne), Sydney (UNSW) and Wollongong (University of Wollongong). FLEET can visit your school to run hands-on, interactive classes for primary and secondary students.
Online options: Today, we can reach anywhere with an internet connection. Contact education@fleet.org.au to chat about running an online activity with your class.
We’ve shown many groups of keen students through the FLEET labs at Monash University. Many other schools aren’t able to visit in person, but you can take a virtual tour to check out the laser labs and scanning tunnelling microscopes.
Home science
FLEET aims to make science more accessible to the wider community, and bring science to even the youngest Australians. We encourage families to do activities at home that foster a love for science from an early age. To help encourage future scientists, FLEET provides fun, easy home science activities and experiments.
While the experiments are easy and fun to do at home, they are also applicable to the classroom. Many of the experiments are linked to the teacher resources and are designed to get kids to think critically about the science and what is happening. The experiments are divided into curriculum aligned categories, except for Physics at random, which is just fun stuff.