HAY LEVELS
Photo: CompletelyNovel
For 10 days in May, Hay-onWye comes alive with stories,
ideas, laughter, music and
quite a few tents, as they run
their annual literary festival.
Writers, filmmakers, comedians,
politicians, musicians and
environmentalists have been
coming to the Hay Festival in the
Brecon Beacons National Park for
an exchange of views and meeting
of minds since 1987. Programmes
for children and young adults
include talks and workshops,
and many of these are available
all year around for a small fee
on the audio and video archive
www.hayfestival.com/archive.
Hay is now reaching out to
students via the internet with
a series of free online shorts
called Hay Levels. The concept of
Hay Levels grew from a chance
meeting between mathematician
and scientist Marcus du Sautoy
and some A-level students,
while he was on his way to
take part in the Hay Festival.
Discovering which bits of the
A-Level maths syllabus they
found difficult he gave them an
impromptu masterclass and as
a result they achieved better
than predicted A-Level grades.
According to Peter Florence,
director of the Hay Festival, “That
was the seed. We wanted to share
this amazing opportunity to talk
to the world’s greatest teachers
with everybody. YouTube is the
perfect platform, and that directto-camera delivery is an intimate
and easy format that works for a
generation used to Snapchat and
Skype.” Thus Hay Levels was born
“to fire students with a nugget
that sets them thinking. The films
are to supplement what teachers
in schools are already doing and
designed to spark new ideas on
familiar subjects and questions.”
This series of free 3 minute
lectures is aimed specifically at
A-Level students. Last year’s
videos looked at exam techniques
and very specific questions, this
year however the videos will be
directly linked to core A-Level
syllabus questions. So if you
want a mini masterclass from
Richard Dawkins, Jim Al-Khalili
or Simon Schama check out
www.youtube.com/HayLevels
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