Day 11 – Pheww..its over

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.