Cyberneering with Heriot-Watt

Wash up and Celebration Session Planned

hjrea — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:48:16 +0000

We will be having a wash-up session to collect feedback from the demonstrators about how they felt about the Cyberneering event and ideas for next year. Afterwards there will be some food and time to celebrate everything that we’ve managed to achieve. This is taking place in town at 5:30pm Wednesday 16th April. If you haven’t received an email invitation and would like to attend send me an email (h.j.rea@hw.ac.uk) for more details.

Link to Amy and Pi’s Interview

hjrea — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:55:10 +0000

I finally got around to going back to The Naked Scientists web site to read and listen to Amy and Pi’s interview. You can find it here:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/895/

Well done Amy its fantastic, and Pi sounded rather intelligent too!

The get-out – its all gone!

hjrea — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:15:23 +0000

Its amazing how quickly things can go up and come down again. The East Drawing room has a completely different feel about it now that the banners are down, and the trussing is dissassembled. We did take advantage of that old addage many hands make light work. We spent an hour or so packing up on Saturday after Wonderama had closed to the public, and then the majority of items were moved downstairs as the vans were collected from the university first thing (9am) on Sunday morning. We needed to do two runs, but it was all done and dusted by 2pm.

So now its time to spend time recovering and rebuilding relationships with those who have been tolerant of all the extra hours and stress that being invovled in the Science Festival entails. We’ll need to count up the returned cards and questionnaires, return borrowed items, pack things away, do some reflection and brainstorming and put in a bid for funding to do it all again next year! Oh and there’s a party to plan too. And then back to our usual lives with a little extra cheerfulness or glow knowing we have made alot of people happy and that we may have even inspired a few to become engineers like us!

Photos by Tadhg O’Donovan

Day 11 – Pheww..its over

hjrea — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:52:02 +0000

Things were slower today. Even so we ran out of sticker sheets and then prizes (until we found a supply of Tesco bubble bath hidden away to make up swirley bottles). The Cyberneers used the quiet times to count the completed sticker sheets that had been returned over the past 10 days. They counted a total of over 900 sheets. They also counted those that that favourites marked on them, and though I don’t have the figures to hand it turns out Design-a-Zook was choosen the most frequently. Which is a surprise considering our thoughts on Day 1. I am a bit concerned that we may not have collected quite enough response sheets from parents, but we definitely have alot of good evidence from kids many of whom filled out theout comment cards. It feels as though we reached more people this year. Having the drop ins around the workshop activities does seemed to have worked, as parents and younger siblings as well as those who didn’t manage to get booked in found much to occupy their time and minds as kids designed zooks or splodged.

Tom Pringle (aka Dr Bunhead) dropped by after closing his show at the National Museum of Scotland yesterday to have a quick look around. He seemed reasonably impressed in the atmosphere we have managed to create and how big we have grown.

Some reflections to consider for next year:

you won’t be able to change as many things as you would like once things get going
sticker sheets are popular, and you will need at least 200 per day
being on the floor all day is very tiring, and you should try to boost your immune system before hand
students are an incredible resource and they will probably suprise you
ROLAND needs some TLC before February 2009
talk to IT support as early as possible and ask for PC’s with more then 512MB ram
Design-a-Zook works best with a plasma screen
Design-a-Zook and Splodge should be 8+ years
Design-a-Zook sessions should be run on the hour and last 45 mins
Splodge sessions can be booked every 15 minutes and run for 20-30 mins
Mixing it Up and Sensing with Light activities appealled to the under 5′s as well as older age groups
group people into teams before trying to make a schedule
make sure that when someone drops out (and someone will) that when you redo the schedule you take into account the hand over plans you had when redistributing their hours.
blogging is a great way of communicating and recording whats happened
a dry run is great for refreshing your memory and testing out new exhibits

There are many more I am sure. I will try to add them as I remember and tag them as reflections.

Plans for the Get-out

hjrea — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:03:16 +0000

Current plans for the get out are as follows:

Saturday 5th April

5pm - start packing up as much as possible

Sunday 6th April

9am – some to meet at Assembly Rooms to continue packing, others to meet up at HW to collect vans

10am – vans at assembly rooms for first load

11 am – vans leave Assembly Rooms with first load

11:30 am – vans unloaded at HW Mech Eng stores

12:30 – van(s) leave HW

13:00 – van(s) arrive at Assembly Rooms for second load

14:00 – van(s) depart Assembly Rooms (most people go home)

14:30 – van(s) arrive at HW to be partially unloaded at HW Mech Eng stores – the tables stay on the van

15:30 – everyone else goes home

This is of course a rough guide.

Who should go where? Jim will be at the assembly rooms early on Sunday to pack up Pi. The drivers should of course go to HW where I will meet them at Mech Eng stores. Most people should head to Assembly rooms for 9 am (Note parking is free on Sunday). Those who will work at HW only should be at Mech Eng Stores for 11:30 am.

Day 11-3 = 9 – Shortages, Fab Reviews, Party Decisions & Saturday Breakfast

hjrea — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:45:03 +0000

Only two more days left now. Things are starting to run out. I think we may have just enough candles to get through the next two days, but the sticker sheets are running low. I am not sure where they are going. I am sure I ordered 1K of them, and then another 1K at the end of last week. But we ordered 2K of each of the stickers, and there still seems to be loads of stickers left, but only 200 sticker sheets…must be doing my sums wrong. There are loads of maps left, and I ordered 1K of them.

News from the EISF evaluator is that she’s had a number of kids raving about the Cyberneering exhibits, claiming they were the best things in Wonderama. I’ve also had some nice emails from the staff who attended on Sunday.

Re the party survey (ie where and when we should have a party) the current results are leaning towards a party in town at the beginning of next term, so I will decline the offer of tickets from the EISF for Sunday 7th.

For those who will be working on Saturday, Madlab will be providing breakfast in the ballroom from 8:45 to 9:15.

Day I don’t know + 1 – Teachers & Dynamic Earth

hjrea — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:43:26 +0000

Today was the day that the teachers came to visit. Wendy form Edinburgh and Laura from Dunbar. Both had seen our exhibits last year and had contacted us before asking if we went out to schools. Well now with the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) project Imagineering Schools Road Show we do. So we will be in touch with them and make the trips to inspire a few more children with our Imagineering magic!

An extract of an email from Wendy:

I thought the Cyberneering workshops at the Wonderama were fabulous, my little girl and her friend were fascinated by all the activities. Well done for inspiring them and all the hard work.

We also had Conor from Dynamic Earth enquiring if we would be interested in us participating in a “careers fair” for P7-S2′s in October. This is the exact age group that we are targeting in the Imagineering project, but the Design-a-Zook and Splodge activities would suit this event.

It just goes to show how valuable our participation in the Wonderama venue is for developing new contacts for public engagement activities! Yeah .

Day I don’t know anymore – missing T’s & Pi’s Radio Debut

hjrea — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:45:22 +0000

The days are fast merging into each other and I no longer know what day it is. I do know we are into the last week now. A new set of demonstrators are coming on board this week, bring fresh enthusiasm with them. Some of us are waning and succumbing to the onslaught of infections that comes with dealing with a multitude of young children. I think it would be advisable to include information about boosting immune systems in the training sessions!

One issue with fresh demonstrators is the lack of t-shirts. I ordered 75 t-shirts for the 50+ demonstrators who volunteered. But last Friday the extra t-shirts disappeared. I am aware that some Cyberneers took 2 t-shirts, but I would still expect there to be 10-15 t-shirts left. So for those of you who did take extra t-shirts please return them, as some of the new starts didn’t attend training day and so don’t have t-shirts. The rest of you keep your eyes peeled for people wearing day glow t-shirts falsely claiming they are Cyberneers!!

Today both Pi and Amy made their radio debut when the Naked Scientist team came to record Pi’s whitterings. We are hoping they will be broadcast on Sunday 6th April at 6:00pm on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. The Naked Scientist is an EPSRC funded project which is

“a media-savvy group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University who use radio, live lectures, and the Internet to strip science down to its bare essentials, and promote it to the general public.”

You can get their shows via podcast here: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/.

Day three – Favourites

hjrea — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:40:03 +0000

Day three started slowly, but there were a queue of anxious mums at noon to book afternoon slots for Splodge and Design-a-zook.

The sticker leaflets are proving very popular. Having the children hand them in once they have managed to collect most, of not all the six stickers provides an ideal opportunity to ask then which activity they have enjoyed the most. I am pleased to say that all of the activities have got a mention. Many like Pi‘s jokes, others like ROLAND, and pumping up the elephant trunk. Mixing it Up is popular because of the goo and chocolate eggs of course. Design-a-Zook is ever popular, especially if their zook has managed to win a challenge, and the shear novelty of the haptic device makes Splodge an instant hit with many (as well as a take home candle). Sensing with Light’s colourful photoelasticity displays, optical illusion mirrors and bridges that can be jumped on are popular too. One boy even choose the non stickered Imagineering table as his favourite, where he saw the hyman fire piston and Stirling engine.

Photos by JR Peterson

Photos from the training day

hjrea — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:35:52 +0000

Photos by JR Peterson

Roland

Design-a-Zook

Splodge

Mixing it up

Sensing with light

Group Photo