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.

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

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

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

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

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

Day two – from press to party

A great start to the day! On the way into the festival today I picked up the Edinburgh Metro on the bus to find one of the mirror pictures in the paper.  Apparently a similar image was in the Scotsman and Roland was on one of today’s Scotsman video interviews. As I walked in the Assembly Room side doors I overheard some kids waiting for Wonderama to open for the day saying that they wanted to do Splodge and the Magnificent Milling Machine.

The day proceeded well.  The booking system has been refined, and Steve’s backbone is stronger then ever.  We must remember to close the tap when replacing the fluid though :).  A couple of laptops arrived to boost the Zooks power and we have reverted to hour long slots for the Design-a-Zook, so that both the machines and the Cyberneers can get a break between sessions. 

I had to leave just after noon for a meeting at the University, hoping that everyone managed to get a lunch break.  I also did some laminating of signs and nametags and a quick trip to the local cash and carry to buy them out of their remaining easter eggs for the Mixing it up crew.

Then it was back to Wonderama for the EISF 20th birthday party.  There was much festivities, photographs and food.  Prof Andy Walker came to show his support and there were various dignatories from the local council, as well as from the other sponsers.  Patricia Erskine of Edinburgh University also visited our stand.

Day one – we have lift off!

Cyberneering at Wonderama 2008, Day One.

The day started earlier then last years Wonderama with the first guests arriving at 9:30.  We have had issues with our booking system and the Apple Mac.  The Apple has now been relegated to a glorified sign, while our trusty laptop is powering the booking system.  We have split the booking periods to morning and afternoon sessions, to prevent the problem of being totally booked up by 10am.  Now the afternoon sessions cannot be booked until after 12pm.  Our Steve showed great nerve in the face of many a harrassed mother and did not start taking booking until 12pm exactly. 🙂 , and we were almost fully booked by the time I left the venue at 1pm.

We had a couple of incidents with the Mixing it Up Wave Machine producing waves of tsunami proportions and flooding the floor with a slippery mix of oil and water.  The Assembly Room staff were quick to give us a helping and and a mop.  The source of the problem has been identified, and now the motor controls are obsured from little hands who can ramp up the speed far too high and far too quickly.

The Splodge (and the Magnificent Milling Machine) activity is proving to be popular again this year.  And now that we have put the correct (4mm not 6mm) tool bit on the milling machine, the candles that have been milled have identifiable letters on them.

The Design -a-Zook activity doesn’t appear to be just as popular as it was last year, although it is early days yet.  It may be because BAMZOOKi is not currently airing on BBC.  A couple of issues with this activity have been the advertised aged.  It is in the programme and signage as 6+, but ideally should be 8+… something I didn’t catch in the proofing.  We have decided to shorten the sessions as the younger kids are not able to concentrate for a full 45-60mins, so now the sessions will be 30-45mins, which will allow for extra sessions.  The PC’s we were so kindly provided by the computing staff at the last minute, aren’t quite up to the job since we need to run a monitoring program for the help files.  We are going to get some laptops to replace them in the next couple of days.

Let me see, I think Sensing with Light and Pi both ran totally smoothly! ROLAND is about the same as last year, but his backdrop is much better!

There were a number of photographers in thoughout the day. The concave mirror was used as a back drop for a number of press shots.  Too bad we didn’t have any branding on it!  Pi was the centre of photographers attention too for a while.  They seemed to like the colours.  Steve was centre shot with his orange t-shirt against the purple book in sign up, as was the book here sign on the Apple Mac!