On Friday, November 9th I had a great interaction with a woman named Cambria and four kids (a girl of approximately 10, a boy of about 11 or 12, a girl of about 7 or 8, and about a 3-year-old boy). She is a part of a program that brings homeschooled kids to MOXI. She does structural design work and informed me that they just became members that day. It was her first time in the museum.
The majority of my shift was spent at this exhibit with the group. The time went by so quickly even when they left for about half an hour to get food.
It started when I began building an elevated structure. At some point, a 10- or 11-year-old girl was excited about the design and I invited her to help. The girl eventually called her mother, Cambria, who then came over and showed a high level of interest in Bloom Build.
Initially, the 10-year-old asked what was being built, but as we continued new questions emerged such as what direction we should take with the structure, if we should build an Eiffel Tower inspired structure, and new ideas for different challenges or designs.
There were a lot of inferred NGSS practices I observed while interacting with the group at the exhibit: internal questions were being asked such as which pieces fit, how to fit the pieces together to secure the structure, where to put the next piece to create a stronger foundation. There was a level of planning involved when the structure’s height increased, and when the structure seemed to be susceptible to collapse, there was communication about what potential changes needed to be made.
Teamwork really became apparent when the structure seemed on the brink of destruction; one person would hold the volatile part, another would quickly add pieces, and even the youngest participant, a 3-year-old boy named Hunter, would carry pieces over to whoever was scrambling to add some stability to the building.
Cambria used the term cross bracing to describe which areas needed more attention. I inferred she was using a level of mathematical thinking, considering cross bracing involves knowing which forces are acting on certain parts of the structure, and a certain amount of pieces are needed to brace that area.
I think it’s possible to get people to use a system in building with Bloom Build. As you continue using the exhibit, it becomes more apparent the number of attachments you can achieve, the way you need to attach the pieces to create a direction or shape, and the patterns in a heap of apparent mess that look or behave in a manner that might be useful for future designing. For instance, I could see loops and rooms that would be a fun crawling adventure for a child like Hunter, who did try but didn’t get far considering the bottom of the structure was mainly an array of attachments primarily intended to keep everything from falling down.
Analyzing and interpreting data and developing models for potential use outside of the museum are a couple of NGSS practices that I didn’t observe from my experience. I think that applying those methods would create a less haphazard assortment of parts, and would result in pre-arranging of hooks and gears; overall the process would look almost like a factory line, intentional and less abstract. I enjoyed the abstract, chaotic process as it provided an organic learning experience and an epistemic engineering process.
Experimenting at a Program Cart
I recalled an interaction with Ron from a couple weeks ago while deciding on a program cart on Saturday, November 10th. I brought out a program cart I tried once after his evaluation of it needing further revision, and that was put away for another more organized demonstration on heat transfer. I took the experience with the heat transfer program cart and attempted, once again, to emulate the educational process with the very busy light program cart.
This was something I initially took interest in because I wanted to find inspiration for my final on the Color Wheel. What I found was that the container storing it’s components had educational gems that needed to be parsed into different phenomenon.
I rolled the program cart out to the space next the window by the water fountain and decided to try something different. I asked Destiny if I could try the program cart by Spinetic Wheels and she gave the go ahead. I set up a program cart with the intention of exploring one phenomenon, like Ron had emphasized with the heat transfer: white light bent creates a rainbow. I took out the parts I thought essential for this demonstration and left the rest stored away.
The cart was stationed by the outlet next to the Spinetic Wheels. I used the extension cord to plug in the light dimmer, screwed on the bulb, and hid the adjuster inside the cart (as kids like to play with it, which I learned from my first attempt). I placed four of the disposable diffraction glasses out on the table along with the drawn chart on light frequencies, the prism, and curved clear plastic doohickey. I stored the laser and flashlight inside the cart with the dimmer.
Angela came over to see how the set up was coming along. I admitted I had some issues facilitating the cart so she helped me think of some questions to ask. One of them she proposed was, “What do you think would happen with a different colored light bulb?” She answered that the color seen in the diffraction lens would be the same as the bulb color. I thought that was a great question and pondered more on it. It immediately inspired me with an activity using the spinetic wheels themselves.
A 4-year-old girl came over and I greeted her. I asked if she would like to see something cool and encourage her to try the glasses. She put them on and looked at the lightbulb. I then asked her to look at the wheels above, and pressed the button to light them. She was dazzled.
With the diffraction lens you can see the “MOXI” on the first wheel creates a rainbow, as it is a white light similar to the light bulb. I think the one in stock should be replaced with a 5000K, 40W bulb which I’m willing to donate as I have 3 extra at home or an LED color changing bulb as the 2000 - 3000K bulbs give off a warm white and not a cool white and looks yellow. Although the one used might be better for reading books I think the higher kelvin bulbs will be safe as long as the dimmer is kept on the lowest setting, which it should be anyway.
This made facilitating easier. I asked which colors the kids saw on the first wheel, the second, the third, and then asked them to look at the bulb and tell me what they saw. The responded a rainbow, and I followed up by asking which one of the wheels they saw a rainbow on. I also asked why they thought those bulbs produced rainbows. A majority of kids could gather that “they were like nothing” and if they were older or had the vocabulary got it was due to white light.
I tried to demonstrate Newton’s prism experiment, but had trouble getting the rainbow initially. Angela tried while I took my break, and when I came back she said she got a full, large and vibrant rainbow to show. I had to settle for the less impressive mini rainbow arch, which I used to demonstrate the white light bending phenomenon.
Anway, the process was fun thanks to the open-mindedness and contributions of my colleagues Destiny and Angela (Brian popped in for a short bit too)! The facilitation was good as well as plentiful, and I heard a lot of positive comments like “She’s doing a rainbow thing, that’s so cool!” from a kid, “It’s a psychedelic experience!” from a parent, and “I want to come back and hear what you were talking about!” from another parent who was in a discussion with another adult at the time I was talking about it. A lot of parents and kids also loved the glasses.
The staircase area was also a great way to direct people to the light track upstairs, and was a final hurrah for exiting visitors.
-Samantha Brown
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