Ann Boes

[Ann Boes]

I haven’t been able to find a link to it online. If I were able to upload an attachment I could post that. Sean – do you know if it’s online somewhere? It’s called “Making Your Own Biomechanical Hand” from The STEM Center at Southern Illinois University.

[Ann Boes]

How beautifully they handle running every aspect of a cafe. They make it look effortless. I also appreciate how they listen to each others ideas in planning meetings and include everyone.

[Ann Boes]

@Michelle – sounds like a great cafe!

A couple of weeks ago I posted to the forum asking for ideas for the hands-on for our Bionics and Brain Computer Interface cafe. I wanted an activity that would relate more to the brain computer interface than to the bionics side of things. I didn’t come up with anything so we went ahead and did the activity that Gateway TSC had done with this same speaker, building a hand with moving fingers made from index cards, straws, string and tape.

The kids loved it! Most of them didn’t finish by the time our 2 hr cafe ended so we told them they could bring the materials home to finish. I actually told them several times as I kept thinking they hadn’t heard me, because nobody moved. They were having such a great time sitting and talking with each other while building their hands that they stayed late to finish. I think they just really liked spending time together doing a simple project in a relaxed setting.

I was impressed with the design of the hand. I think we’re going to animate them with some servos.

Ann
Teen Science Cafe at Lab:Revolution

[Ann Boes]

I appreciate the post and I really like the advertising poster with neon lettering. Love the line “Brain Food for Teens”!

[Ann Boes]

An interesting follow up to the article posted earlier in this thread:

https://medium.com/message/an-old-fogeys-analysis-of-a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-5be16981034d

[Ann Boes]

One thing we are in the process of developing for our site is this glowing twitter beacon:

http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/sparks-will-fly/things-with-stuff/twitter-emblem

I’m not sure if we’ll have it done in time for the conference, but if we do I’ll bring it.

Ann Boes
TSC at Lab:Revolution
4hlabrevo.wix.com/4hlabrevo

[Ann Boes]

Perhaps one way to utilize sites such as Instagram and Snapchat is by incorporating some sort of photo opportunity within the Cafe that the teens would find fun and want to share with their friends. They would be spreading the word themselves.

It seems to me that by the time I am somewhat caught up on how a platform works, my kids have long since abandoned it.

Ann Boes
TSC@Lab:Revolution
4hlabrevo.wix.com/4hlabrevo

[Ann Boes]

It would be helpful to have a page on the TSC site with links to various Citizen Science projects that might align with Cafe topics, along with commenting capability where TSC site coordinators could share their teen’s experience with a given project.

[Ann Boes]

I hope that some of the more experienced TSC coordinators will respond to this post. This is an area of interest (and concern) for me too.

Ann Boes
TSC at Lab:Revolution
4hlabrevo.wix.com/4hlabrevo

[Ann Boes]

Hi Eleanour,
I think your idea of reaching out to those folks at Project MALES is a good one. Chances are they would appreciate any additional educational resources that they could recommend to their participants. In our case, we went ahead and organized our first Cafe without having a YLT. We chose something that we thought would be of high interest, Zombies!, and started talking with local teachers about the idea. They got interested and encouraged their students to come. In our case the middle school teachers were the ones who were most interested and we had a large percentage of 13 year olds at our event. Those students really enjoyed the Cafe and are excited about the next one. Some of those teens have now joined the YLT and are working to produce the next few Cafes.

Ann Boes
TSC at Lab:Revolution
4hlabrevo.wix.com/4hlabrevo

[Ann Boes]

We’ve only done one Cafe so far but it was very well attended – 25+ youth. What worked for us was cultivating a relationship with teachers at several schools in the area. The middle school teachers were excited about the opportunity. They really talked it up to their students and then emailed after the event to let us know that they had the students who attended stand up in class the next day and talk about it. They loved it and wanted to know when the next one would be. They shared it with colleagues as well who promoted it in their classes.
Ann
TSC at Lab:Revolution
4hlabrevo.wix.com/4hlabrevo

[Ann Boes]

I am wondering what you are looking for in a partner.
Ann
TSC at Lab:Revolution
4-H Technology Playground and Makerspace

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