Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you. I’m about to head to North Wales to see a 101 year-old, then mid Wales to see my nieces and nephew at a random campsite somewhere. I’ll be back towards the end of next week, at which point I’ll resume posting films. There are lots to get through, and you’ll love them. Really, you will.

In the meantime, somebody from Norway sent us a very interesting email, which was promptly eaten by a mail server move. If you happen to see this, could you get in touch again, please? jonathan[at]planet-scicast.org.uk.

Think it’s been quiet over in SciCast-ville? Not so! We may have been all serene on the surface, but behind the scenes we’ve been trashing our way frantically through more films than ever before. More films, and later, too — you lot don’t half like leaving it until the last minute, huh?

However, our labours are starting to bear fruit. Judging for the Awards is underway, and over on the main site you’ll see… dun-dun-durrrrr!

New films!

Oh yes indeed, a little flurry of them. Stay tuned for more through the week. Actually, there are enough that they’ll burst through this week and into the month beyond.

The submission deadline for SciCast 2010 is: TOMORROW!

Wait — for many schools that’s right at the end of the Easter holidays, and hence about the worst possible date we could have picked. Can we be serious? Well, no, not really.

We checked and re-checked when picking the date, double-checked and checked again, and still Easter has ended up leaping out of nowhere and ambushing us. Sorry about that. However, we’ve always been a little… flexible about our deadlines.

If you want to enter but can’t quite do it in time, go to the submission page and start the process, then upload your film and post us the paperwork as soon as you can.

So long as everything arrives next week you should be fine — the week after may be pushing things too far, but if there are particular circumstances you can’t avoid then drop us a line and we’ll do our very best to accommodate you.

Just a quick notice: comments are working again at the main SciCast site. Sorry about the extended problems.

We’re aware of problems with comments on the films — you can submit comments, but they’re not showing up in the moderation system, so we’ve no way of making them visible. It’s possible that comments are simply getting lost.

Our colleagues at EngineeringUK are aware of the issue, and are working to solve it. In the meantime, our apologies.

[update Wednesday 3^rd March: sorry, no change to the site so far, and we don’t have an estimated fix date. We’ll keep you posted.]

Notice anything different?

That’s right — no longer do you have to strain to read white text and near-invisible red links on a black background. We’ve finally rebuilt this blog so it’s more in keeping with the rest of the SciCast site. In fact, it’s even more up-to-date than the main site is, and we have all sorts of plans for things we could do with this new layout.

There will doubtless be a few niggles and problems as we work things out. We’re reasonably confident that this design isn’t more broken than the previous one, but if you spot anything that’s gone haywire, please leave a comment here or drop us a line by email.

Internet Explorer 6

OK, so things are a little funkier than we’d intended in IE6. Sorry about that. IE6 has been past its use-by date for years, so if you can, install Firefox, Chrome or IE8. They’re all much faster and more secure browsers anyway.

If you’re on a managed network and can’t update your browser, you have our sympathies. The site does still work, though, so you’re not missing much. Please note that we’re not alone in phasing out support for IE6; YouTube is about to do the same. If they can’t justify the engineering resources to support a buggy nine year-old browser, SciCast certainly can’t!

[update: we’re receiving word that things are a little funky in IE7 as well. That’s hard for me to test, but I’ll see if I can get it sorted.]

Short version: we didn’t win.

Longer version: That was fun!

We had a wonderful time in Berlin — we’ll try to post some photos over the next few days — and the MEDEA Awards were a terrific way of bringing together a disparate group of projects and people. We’d never have realised we had anything in common until somebody put us in the same room and told us we did. I’m extremely grateful to the organisers for sparking all sorts of interesting and potentially useful conversations.

The entirely worthy winners were:

• Innovation Award: Daisy & Drago, an animation developed by a class of 6 year-olds in a Turkish school. A wonderful, mad achievement led by a brilliantly enthusiastic teacher.
• Special Jury Award: Eyes on the Skies by the European Southern Observatory. The jury paid particular credit to the high quality of the video, but the way the film has been distributed is at least as impressive. A big, glossy, but very well-executed project. Also, Lars from the ESO was hilarious.
• European Collaboration Award: Traditions Across Europe, a comparative project encompassing 22 schools, led by a school in Italy. A huge achievement for a tiny project, driven entirely by goodwill and tenacity — a great example of how much can be achieved if you just roll your sleeves up and get on with it.
• Overall MEDEA Award: Know It All, by Childnet International. The other UK nominee, this is a very complete and well thought-through set of modules about online safety, aimed at quite young children. Fun, witty, colourful, and well-paced animations deliver clear messages.

It’s a cliché, but we really are delighted to move in such circles, and it was an honour to reach the final stage. Our sincere congratulations to the winners, and to the other finalists.

Normally, it’s us giving out the awards to celebrate the very best films you send in. However, SciCast — the whole project — is itself up for an award. We’re one of eight finalists for the MEDEA Awards 2009.

MEDEA is a pan-European organisation that ‘recognises excellence and creativity in media in education’, so we’re utterly thrilled to be recognised by them. Katie and I are jetting off to Berlin at the end of the week for the Awards event, and to meet the other finalists, who range from an astronomy project from the European Southern Observatory to an Italian schools’ project about local traditions across the continent.

Here’s more about the finalists, about the 2009 Awards, and about the MEDEA organisation in general.

Of course, we wouldn’t have got anywhere without all the terrific support and particularly films contributed by so many of you over the last few years. Reaching this stage of the MEDEA Awards is a wonderful recognition of the imaginative, insightful, and plain crazy work done by SciCasters across the UK and Ireland.

Yay us: all of us.

Here are the Nominations for the Planet SciCast Awards 2009. Not all these films are viewable yet — we’ll be catching up as quickly as we can, so keep checking back to see which new ones we’ve published!

Best Presenter 2009

• Music to Our Ears — Thunderbolt Three
• Why do Boats Float? — Floating Physics
• Sound — Duke and Dave
• The Floating Tea Bag — Teabag Techs

Award for Technical & Artistic Achievement 2009

• The God Particle — Vibrant Films
• Explaining Fibre Optics — Nower Hill High School
• Volcanic Islands — Helston Science
• How Wavelength Affects Pitch — Team Phree

Flipside Most Entertaining Film 2009

• Wibbly Wobbly Jelly — Le Hom
• The Geiger-Müller Groove — Let’s Get Physical
• Pressure and the Gas Laws — It’s Physics Time
• Boat Bother — Super Hero Scientists
• Relativity and Warp Drives — Space Hoppers
• Atmospheric Pressure — The Air Heads

Best Original Score 2009

• The Geiger-Müller Groove — Let’s Get Physical
• Transcription and Translation: The Latest Sensation! — Demented Student Productions
• Photosynthesis — BB Productions
• Levitating Lime — Team Jayman

Best Chemistry Film 2009

• Professor Hartley’s Science Lesson (2M) — Year 2M
• Chemistry Attack!! — LangClang
• Exploding Water — Team Tom
• The Screaming Jelly Baby — Josh & Mathew

Best Earth Science and Environment Film 2009

• Breezeblocks — Legotown Productions
• Pollution — Aaarrgghh!! — Eagle Eye 9
• The Formation of Crude Oil — Crazy Chemistry Demonstrations
• Volcanic Islands — Helston Science

Best Biology Film 2009

• Why do Ants Wear Sunglasses? — BaSSic Studios
• Photosynthesis — BB Productions
• Six Steps to a Perfect Poo — Helston Science
• Olympic Flowers — Badminton Junior School
• Mrs. Gren — Badminton Junior School

The Engineering and Technology Board Best Engineering Film 2009

• Building Bridges — Treacherous Two
• Water Rockets — How They Work — SAS JGS Productions
• Death of a Toothbrush — Protons for Breakfast
• EMP Launcher v2 — The Tinkerers

The Institute of Physics’ Best SciCast Physics Film 2009

• The Geiger-Müller Groove — Let’s Get Physical
• Pollution — Aaarrgghh!! — Eagle Eye 9
• Explaining Fibre Optics — Nower Hill High School
• How Wavelength Affects Pitch — Team Phree
• Lasers — thegroupwithnoname
• Atmospheric Pressure — The Air Heads

EPSRC Best Film (Adults) 2009

• The Immiscible Love Story — Aksheusz Studios
• It’s About Time (you switched off your television set and did physics instead) — Small Dog Productions
• Buckley’s Double-Acting Baking Powder — Dan and Agnes
• Levitation: Science or Magic? — Shift Productions

Best Film (Primary) 2009

• Absolute Absorbency or Not? — Barnes Primary 61!
• Orbiting X-Factor — 5R Orbiting X-Factor Script Editors
• Mrs. Gren — Badminton Junior School
• Electricity — Team SciStars

Best Film (Secondary) 2009

• The God Particle — Vibrant Films
• The Geiger-Müller Groove — Let’s Get Physical
• The Formation of Crude Oil — Crazy Demonstrations
• Atmospheric Pressure — The Air Heads

Notes

Nominees will receive certificates, together with invitations to the glittering Awards Ceremony, to be held at the Royal Institution in London on 30^th March 2009. Category winners will be announced at the Ceremony: winning teams will receive individual mini-awards and a coveted ‘SciCastie’ block award for the team, along with Amazon vouchers.

Congratulations and good luck to all the nominees, and our thanks to everyone who submitted a film.

The Big Bang Fair is wrapping up, which means we finally have a bit of quiet (well, apart from people dismantling exhibition stands all around us…) to write up the nominations list.

Here we go…