{"id":412,"date":"2014-08-25T16:14:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T16:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biooutreach\/?p=412"},"modified":"2014-08-25T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T16:14:23","slug":"forfar-academy-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/2014\/08\/25\/forfar-academy-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Forfar Academy Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Figure_1\"<\/a>The University of St Andrews hosted a visit from Forfar Academy<\/a> \u00a0on Monday August 18th, to help an enthusiastic group of S5 pupils begin to explore the use of computers in biology.<\/p>\n

Dr Daniel Barker <\/a>\u00a0of the University\u2019s School of Biology and PhD students Rosanna Alderson<\/a> \u00a0and James McDonagh<\/a> \u00a0of the University\u2019s School of Chemistry used 9 Raspberry Pi<\/a>\u00a0computers loaded with \u201c4273pi<\/a>\u201d , a customised version of the Linux operating system developed at St Andrews for teaching and learning computational biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"20140818_180742\"<\/a>Pupils were guided through practical examples to gain hands-on experience of research-grade computing applied to biological problems. One pupil remarked: \u201cThe best part of the activity today was learning how useful computers are in biology and having the chance to use the software that scientists use. I enjoyed the entire day and there wasn\u2019t one part I didn\u2019t enjoy. It was really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working along with Forfar Academy staff \u2013 Mr Stuart Sweeny and Mr Leigh Duncan \u2013 in the afternoon researchers showed the seven pupils how to use the Linux operating system, work with the Perl computing language, and find related sequences using BLAST software on the Raspberry Pi. \u201cThe best part was creating Perl scripts as we got to see how an ordinary computer works\u201d, commented one sixth former.<\/p>\n

\"20140818_152623\"<\/a>After refreshments (funded via a grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council<\/a> ) in the Bell Pettigrew Museum<\/a>, pupils worked on into the evening. They learnt about discovering where genes actually are, within genome sequences \u2013 using an example from real research based at the University of St Andrews<\/a> .<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best part was going on flybase<\/a>\u00a0because I found it really interesting\u201d, commented another sixth former.<\/p>\n

This was the second 4273pi outreach event, and the first to be held at the University rather than at a school. Researchers were delighted with the enthusiasm of pupils and their ability to grasp new computing approaches to problem solving in biology.<\/p>\n

All the pupils involved intend to go to university, where they will benefit from this early grounding in practical scientific computing.<\/p>\n

Mr Stuart Sweeney, Teacher of Biology at Forfar Academy, felt the best aspect was \u201cthe pupils being given the opportunity to contextualise their theory based work in class into a practical application using the software\u201d. Further, \u201cThe pupils were all fully engaged and gained a great deal from the seminar. I have also gained an insight into bioinformatics which will be vital for teaching the next part of the new higher on genomics\u201d.<\/p>\n

The overall verdict from Mr Leigh Duncan, Teacher of Physics at Forfar Academy: \u201cExcellent, thoroughly recommended for other schools to take part!\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact: Daniel Barker<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of St Andrews hosted a visit from Forfar Academy \u00a0on Monday August 18th, to help an enthusiastic group of S5 pupils begin to explore the use of computers in biology. Dr Daniel Barker \u00a0of the University\u2019s School of Biology and PhD students Rosanna Alderson \u00a0and James McDonagh \u00a0of the University\u2019s School of Chemistry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,17,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-schools","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2014\/08\/Figure_1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/outreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}