The resources on this page have been selected to support educators in finding CREST project ideas that require little equipment, can be run outside of a lab or at home, and use equipment that doesn’t require much sharing.
Find out more about the different CREST Award levels here: CREST Awards.
At primary level, our curated home learning packs don’t require many resources so they’re perfect to use either in the classroom or at home. For Primary teachers who have CLEAPSS access, we recommend this piece on doing Practical activities within your bubble.
At secondary level, each project brief has an overall challenge, ideas for getting started and a list of resources you might need. Read the health and safety section carefully before you begin. Young people should create a plan for their project and a risk assessment before they begin any practical activity. You can use the CLEAPSS student safety sheets as well as the rest of the CLEAPSS website to help them.
If you are looking for further advice on how to get started with CREST, visit our help centre and check out our FAQs.
If you are looking for ideas for running CREST at home, many of the below resources are suitable, and you can still access our Star and SuperStar Home Learning packs below. If you need further support, check out the CREST at home section of the Help Centre.
Teacher guide Taught by technology AI in education generally focuses on identifying what students do and don’t know through testing, and developing personalised curricula based on students’ specific needs. In this project students will find and try out a range of educational applications that use AI for one or more of the following: generating smart content (e.g. condensing text book content into quizzes); intelligent tutoring systems (personalised to the learning styles of the pupil); and/or virtual learning environments (virtual tutors). Students will be challenged to design and conduct an investigation to compare and evaluate AI powered education apps, conducting tests, surveys and interviews to gather data about the effectiveness of educational apps. They will need to think about what indicators they will use as measures, how to conduct a fair test, and how to collect and analyse their data. Prompts • How many participants will you use? How long will your study be? • Will participants use the app once for a long duration, or lots of times but for short durations? Why? • Remind students to think about all the variables in their investigation. • Students should think about how they will measure their results before starting any practical investigation. 10
Student brief Taught by technology AI is being used in education to help identify what students do and don’t know through testing, and developing personalised curricula based on students’ specific needs. There are apps that gamify learning through quizzes, AI tutors that you can have conversations with, and school management systems to help teachers understand how their students are performing. Imagine you are a headteacher. Some of your students want to learn a new instrument, and others want to learn a new language, but you can’t find the teachers to teach it. Some other schools in the area are starting to offer lessons without teachers, where students learn from apps that use machine learning, and you want to find out more. Conduct an experiment to find out how effective apps are and how they compare to learning from a teacher. Getting started Start by choosing either a musical instrument or a language for the apps you will investigate. Next you will need to find some apps to test, do some research online and pick at least 2 apps to compare. Then you will need to recruit participants for your experiment. There will be lots of variables in your experiment. Where possible you should try to control these, or make sure you are only changing one at a time. Before starting your experiment, make sure you have planned how you will measure your results and how you will keep your test fair. Things to think about • Do your participants have any knowledge of the subject before starting your experiment? Try to find people with no previous knowledge in the subject, so that everyone is starting from the same point. • How many participants will you recruit for each group? Will they all be from the same year group or will you use students from different year groups? Try to make sure each group has a similar number and type of participants. • How long will they spend on the apps? What time of day will they use the apps? • How will you measure the results? Can you create some kind of test that participants take before and after using the app, so that you can measure how much progress they make? • Will you also compare your results to students that had no lessons? How could this technology complement the role of the teacher for the overall benefit to the student? Useful resources • Apps for students bigdatamadesimple.com/how-apps-for-studentsare-using-ai-for-doing-lessons-better/ • Duolingo research ai.duolingo.com/ • Machine learning in education trueinteraction.com/ai-and-the-classroommachine-learning-in-education/ • Second langauge learning medium.com/@sanalabs/the-unreasonableeffectiveness-of-deep-learning-in-languagelearning-bededd4cba10 • AI tutor https://www.korbit.ai/ Health and safety To avoid any accidents, make sure you stick to the following health and safety guidelines before getting started: • Find out if any of the materials, equipment or methods are hazardous using http://science.cleapss.org.uk/Resources/Stu dent-Safety-Sheets/ to assess the risks (think about what could go wrong and how serious it might be). • Decide what you need to do to reduce any risks (such as wearing personal protective equipment, knowing how to deal with emergencies and so on). • Make sure there is plenty of space to work. • Clear up slip or trip hazards promptly. • Make sure your teacher agrees with your plan and risk assessment. 11
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These challenges take about an hour each. Once you have completed eight of them you can get a CREST SuperStar Award. Start by downloading the Passport. Children can use this to record each activity they complete.
Our curated packs for home learning require very little equipment or resources, so are ideal now that you are back in the classroom. They also add flexibility as students can finish their Star or SuperStar Award at home, if needed.
Each challenge has an organiser card and an activity card. All the instructions to set up the activity are in the organiser card. Read the 'watch out' section carefully before you begin. Children can use the activity card or you can read it through together.
Find out more about Star and SuperStar levels here.
Each of these projects take between ten and thirty hours to complete. The project briefs have an overall challenge, ideas for getting started and a list of resources students might need. Before they begin, students should read the health and safety section carefully. Once students have completed their projects, they can get a CREST Discovery, Bronze, Silver or Gold Award. The amount of time spent on the project and how well they met the CREST criteria determines the level students will be awarded.
Start by downloading the relevant Workbook or Profile Form below. Young people can use these to help them complete their project and record their progress.
Young people should create a plan for their project and a risk assessment before they begin any practical activity, which should be checked by a teacher. You can use the CLEAPSS student safety sheets as well as the rest of the CLEAPSS website to help them.
For Bronze projects, once a student has completed their project, you can sign up to assess it and order their personalised certificate here. Bronze assessment is incredibly easy and can also be adapted for at-home learning if needed due to unexpected lockdowns, meaning parents can always assess when teachers cannot. Check out how to assess a Bronze project here
For Silver and Gold projects student work will need to be submitted online and will be assessed by a CREST assessor. Learn more about assessment for Silver Awards here
Find out more about Bronze level here.
Find out more about Silver level here.
Find out more about Gold level here.
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