8 March 2018

Some days, everything we have planned for a workshop visit goes according to plan. Other days, things don't run so smoothly and there are a few more hurdles. And the likelihood of encountering these hurdles seems to increase when technology is involved.

Today was the first real hands on day for our project. It was a chance to introduce each group to some of the tools that they will be using to develop their exhibit. Some of these introductions went really well, others... not so well.

The tools, links and products we used are just suggestions - there are other options out there that may suit you better. We used these ones because they were free to sign up to, and most of them had an online option so that we didn't need to download a program before we got started. The free, online aspect also means that everyone can access them from a computer outside of school, either at home or in a public library space.

Each group was provided with a learning task that involved them interacting and learning the basics around one of the tolls they will be using. The walking tour group and the chronology exhibit group spent time with our public programs officer Tim, who introduced them to the IZI Travel app. Tim created a walking tour in this app last year as part of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our Botanic Gardens, called the Botanic Gardens Adventure Tour. This is a free app with a lot of online tutorials. It allowed us to trial an app based tourist product without having to develop a stand alone application of our own. The walking tour group will most likely use this app for their project. This session also allowed the chronology group to experiment with a tool that they may use, but also to start thinking about layering stories and curating content. Even if they don't use this app in their final project, learning about the basics of story development will help them.

The video game group is the largest group in the project. This can make communication and agreeing on ideas difficult. Following on from their CodeSpace Camp day, this group needed to start to build a story. We used a program called Storyboard That. This web-based program provides some cartoons and backgrounds to allow users to build their own story sequence. However, there are still a few unresolved decisions in this group for which time periods they will narrate. This is something we will work on as we continue.

The 3D printing group was introduced to TinkerCAD. if you are going to use TinkerCAD in a group setting, it is a good idea to set up the class access beforehand, just to save time. Check out the TinkerCAD for teachers page for links on how to do this. In the end, we signed up the entire class to TinkerCAD. Once logged in, there are six short tutorials that help in learning the controls and also encourage users to start thinking in a 3D space.

Eleanor and Nethukee learning TinkerCAD

The robot group was given 2 finished robots, and 3 still in boxes. Their job was simple - build them! This required a bit of concentration and co-operation, as if one or two pieces are incorrectly attached the robot won't move properly. At the end, I asked the group if it was harder or easier than they expected. Everyone said it was harder! This was one of the two main outcomes we wanted for this group. One was to understand how the robot moved, which is best learnt through building. The other was to start to introduce some challenge and limitations on the process, and to understand that sometimes this type of work is hard, and takes a few goes to get right. This group did not have long to play with their robots, but they did enjoy driving them when they go the chance toward the end of the session.

Harriet and Will building robots

Our final two groups had probably the most challenges. The historical mash-ups and Wiradjuri story group were going to have an introduction to PhotoShop. Both of these groups have more scope than the other groups in deciding the mediums they will use. Today, we wanted them to simply have a play with one option that they might use, and to use this experience as a spring board to investigating other options. However, we had a range of problems with the MacBooks, which had just been updated. They weren't logged in, and because we were using Creative Cloud we needed internet access. The mash-ups group were able to get online and start playing, but unfortunately we could not get connected for the Wiradjuri stories group. This group moved to Storyboard That, and began noting and highlighting parts of the story that they want to interpret.

By the end of the session, we had one main outcome from across all of the groups - the 'doing' part is a lot harder than the planning part!