Difficulties to attend Scitech
- expensive
- worth the cost
- overcrowded
- collaborative exhibits
- Co-op
- Peer led
- part of the brief was to make the activities collaborative. Which means we need more kids on one activity to complete it.
Parents reasons for going to Scitech
- Nostalgia
- something they know about/like sharing
- 3/6 parent interviewed mentioned STEAM and said they one parent to include art.
- 4/6 said that the cost was a factor for them visiting,
- One provoking quote I got was “Use the curriculum guide as a door stop”.
- one parent interview made me think there should be feedback activities within Discoverland
- most people commented on the lack of Scitech roaming support
- I remember a thing at Scitech where you’d “role play” as an astronaut and you had to take the role of one of the people, and there was a rocket simulator. super fun.
- I was speaking to the Rio funding manager the other day, and they have no funding / reporting requirements. There is no expectation to improve.
- ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think/transcript?language=en
- “What Do Babies Think?”
Exhibit Ideas
- Energy land, Sensory activity park, Upside-down puzzle house. Additional – Giant marble run, secret place/ quiet cubbies, Tardis console flyer.
- Note. Sound proofing? sound dampening.
- visualisation of service blueprints
- world section with surface exhibit to underground backup support
- Forest from the roots to the leaves.
- Tell 3 stories about activity/exhibit
- put into service blueprint
Energy land
Energy land shows a range of different ways our world creates, stores and changes energy.
- It has Solar panels that kids can point the sun at to charge things
- Batteries in things to make them run
- Giant plants that pulse with energy as they photosynthesize
- Fire exhibit that shows the transfer of heat and light
- Fossil fuels being consumes
- Bouncy objects that have potential, gravitational and kinetic energy.
- Wind turbines that harvest energy when they spin.
- Hydro dams that collect energy.
- The body digesting food to make energy
- Maybe there are more efficient methods that the kids can choose to use
- Maybe each station has a rating or a colour to indicate how much waste is produced by the method used.
- Maybe the kids have to do something to help all these methods work and then miniature cities light up, gardens bloom with bioluminescence, trains and planes take off.
The children would probably just want to push a lot of buttons, but the parents might enjoy showing the children how to minimise the waste output or they might even enjoy destroying the world. Either way the parents come away with knowledge they probably didn’t have before and they will think about it more often as they have now taught it to their children. The children get to interact with their parents to help save the world through making responsible energy saving choices, inferring that “making good choices is how we help to save the world”.
It deals with something that children never see, but encounter and use numerous forms constantly. They are often told about it without having it properly explained, because most parents don’t know how to explain energy.
- “You have too much energy”
- “leave the lights off because you are wasting energy”
- “the iPad isn’t broken, it just ran out of battery charge”
- “We are stopping to put fuel in the car”
- “The sunlight makes the plants grow”
- “Don’t pull the TV plug out, you will make it not work”
Sensory Activity Park
A park that has a range of sensory activities and experiences that interweave through each other physically.
The waterways
Keep the water table but extend it and have the kids be able to pump water up into water channels that run along pipes and pathways above the ground before returning to the drain. The kids can switch the channels to redirect the flow of water to different areas of the exhibit. Maybe they can add things to the water stream like floating toy items, food coloring, soap, maybe even blockages that the kids have to repair or remove to get the water flowing.
The Sonic Teepee
Three tents that have acoustic interiors, but are also soundproofed from the outside so they don’t overwhelm everyone else. Inside are objects that the kids can use to interact to make sound. They can hammer different substances, wood, metal etc against metal gong, drums, strings, geo harp, bellows activated wind whistles, chimes. Maybe the Waterways pass through the Teepee and can be manipulated to make sounds ie. water levels in glasses. There are also acoustic pipes inside the teepee that lead across the exhibit, probably along the roof and end at different points of the exhibit.
- The kids interact mostly with the instruments, but the teepee is large enough that parents don’t have to crouch.
- There are alcoves that have have half
The Scent Bar
Exactly what it sounds like, a reputable establishment where children of all ages can go after a hard day’s work and experience various scented potpourri, spices, herbs. I envision a display with lots of draws and jars that have a scented substance in them that the child can pull out to sniff, by squeezing the object, or puffing air through it with a little hand puffer, or they have to take it to another device to load the scent and then stand in front of a vent and get blasted with different scents.
- To get the reward of a scent the kid has to manipulate it
- See that scents come from different coloured substances
- Maybe we have sections that are artificial vs natural
- Heat activated scents
- Blowers to take scents away
The Last Light Bender
At the center of the exhibit is a feature creature like a giant beetle that is large enough for parents to walk inside. The roof and walls have holes of varying sizes for kids to fill with a kaleidoscope of coloured inserts and prisms. The cave tunnel ends in a walkout pram ramp next to a texture slide with different items embedded inside it, not plastic. Outside the cave parents and kids can equip themselves with coloured glasses to see the secret message and symbols around the exhibit space. Use prisms to alter your perspective and solve puzzles, bend light into targets to alter the exhibit ambiance. Maybe there are stations around the cave that catch lasers that can then be bent into the cave to make it lighter inside, but only if the children and parents aim it in the correct spots with prisms and coloured window inserts.
- Teaches kids about the different frequencies of light
- That prisms can bed light, it’s not just a straight line.
- Refraction
- Movable filters or patterns
Teayl Thorn 