ALA Museum Day September 29, Wednesday

Today's objective was to introduce the ALA sudents to working on the floor of the museum. Last week we did straw hacking exercise with the kids, and had them make musical instruments and rocket launchers. Today the objective included having the kids make these same straw hacks and take them onto the floor to interact with museum visitors. The students were divided up into the same groups they were in last week, and a few of the kids wanted to switch their groups, but i kept them intact, to see how the kids would interact with people in their groups that are not their best friends. There were four groups - two that were making straw kazoos and two that were making rocket launchers. I separated the groups - one group was placed in a high traffic area, the Explorazone. One group was placed in a medium traffic area - the Hands-on-Science area. Two groups were placed in lower traffic areas, in an attempt to see how they would handle being in an area with nearly no visitors. The groups were on the floor for about 1 hour, and then they came back to the studio for debriefing.
Group one - Kazoos - The high traffic area - they said the noise attracted people to them, and that good explanations were necessary to getting the project to be a success with visitors.
Group Two - Kazoos - kids loved doing, it, but some people couldn't make it work for them. Also of note, it was hard for some of the kids to attract attention of people who had participated with the previous group of kazoo makers.
Group three - rockets - hard to explain, and had to deal with the difficulty of the task driving some people away. They were able to get some people to join them by going out and asking if visitors wanted to make the rockets.
Group four - low traffic area - rockets - they made a game around the rockets, decided to make signs to tell people what was going on and how to get to the Cowtown area where they were located, they advertised personally around the area and later decided to get a prize for the game. This group made use of every resource possible to excite people about their activity. Massively impressed here. One note, a few parents noted that the rockts might have been dangerous for little kids.
The groups learned today about the unpredictability of working on the floor. They were able to see how some people will not be interested in what you are doing and some will. They learned that innovation has to be part of what you do, so as to not seem like the same thing is happening all the time. They learned that good explanations of what's going on make a big difference in attracting people to their project. They also learned that location plays a role here. All of these aspects will come into play as they continue to work on the floor, and gear up for MINDFEST.
Jonathon and Bill were today's facilitators.