New Course! 'Catching the Clouds'

This term is an exciting one - I am teaching a brand new course with The Brilliant Club! It's based on Dar Si Hmad's fog-harvesting project, and I'm really excited to work with a cohort of A-level London students to test out the curriculum.

Catching the Clouds: Water Security and Sustainable Engineering is an interdisciplinary STEM course furthering students' knowledge of meteorology, chemistry, and physics. Using the world's largest fog-harvesting system as a case study, participants will examine the role of engineering in sustainable development. Students will explore the science behind fog formation, solar power, and renewable energies. Design thinking will be used to guide students in considering how we develop and implement sustainable technologies that can improve quality of life, especially for marginalised communities. The course will build pupils’ specific knowledge of Morocco's hydrology and the CloudFisher system while encouraging them to consider applied engineering and sustainable development more broadly.
During their final project, students will critically analyse an existing community intervention and suggest improvements for future work (which might include questions of efficacy, scalability, or sustainability). Pupils will reflect and expand on a case study chosen by them, and may elect to focus their examination on any region, problem, and disciplinary angle they desire. In this way, participants can apply their learning throughout the course to personalised academic interests. The assignment is structured to allow for maximum flexibility while emphasising analytical abilities and an understanding of the broader implications of chosen case studies, thus giving students a taste of the evaluation processes expected at university.
Participation in the course will build students’ capacities for applied engineering and awareness of sustainable development, empowering them to consider how their interest in science can be used to address social issues.

More to come about the programme, I am sure...watch this space! (And in the meantime, please send good vibes as I attempt to teach engineering - HA!)