After a brief introduction, Qinrui got the ball rolling by asking the students to organsie themselves by birthday without being allowed to say a word. There was an awful lot of gesturing going on, but they sorted themselves out in the end (with only three people in the wrong place)! The students were then split into two groups and asked to build the highest free standing tower possible using paper, sellotape & straws. It did get rather competitive...
After attempting to work out what was in a series of sealed tins, the students had an experiment with a variety of materials to try and work out what they did.
The final activity was a Dragon's Den style challenge: design an innovative item and sell it to a panel of experts. One of our judges was Paul Clark from the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation at NetPark, whose company made the amazing mirror in the picture at the top of this post. In small groups, the students got to form a small "company", each with their own role, design and cost an item and then develop a presentation.
We had a new type of self-tan, an elevating/extending wheelchair, and several variations on electronic paper/computer tablets. The eventual winner was the I-Scan, a hand-held eye scanning device for security & medical uses.
NetPark is a fabulous venue and the students had the opportunity to interact with their new course-mates in a very relaxed environment. They also commented on how they not only got to practice existing skills, but develop new ones that, although not directly linked to their course of study, were transferrable and essential for their chosen career. All in all, another successful day out!
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