Open University celebrates its 40th Anniversary
L Kerawalla 29th July 2009
This year is the Open University’s 40th anniversary! As part of the celebrations, the general public were invited to help us celebrate by attending an event called Open Unlimited on 27th June 2009. It was a beautiful sunny day and thousands of people attended. There were a variety of interactive activities, demonstrations and events and one of these was run by the Personal Inquiry project. Our aims were two fold: 1) to demonstrate to the public what we are doing to engage young people with personal inquiry, and 2) to give families hands-on experience of using Sciencescope sensors to explore the new Jennie Lee building and its surroundings.
The PI team had an exhibit located in the Jennie Lee building. Our exhibit was resourced by a large screen displaying photographs and video footage of school students carrying out their personal inquiries. Posters displayed further details and the team were on hand to provide explanations and to answer questions. We had a very positive response.
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Visitors could explore our personal inquiry Activity Guide on the Asus EEE mini-laptops that students from Oakgrove School used to support their fieldtrips. Members of the public could also find out about the Sciencescope sensors that schools have been using to resource their personal inquiries. These measure wind speed, temperature, light levels, humidity, carbon monoxide and infrared irradiance (heat energy coming from buildings and other surfaces). There was a high level of interest in and enthusiasm for the research the project is carrying out.
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Some families were keen to try out the equipment and took part in an activity where they could explore the Jennie Lee building by taking infrared irradiance from various surfaces, including walls made of different coloured glass. They were given a data recording sheet where they recorded their data, that also included air temperature and wind speed. Some of the children were particularly enthralled by measuring the infrared irradiance from trees and from different coloured flowers! Every one had a really enjoyable time as can be seen in our photographs and this email from one of the parents whose son enjoyed our activities:
Best of luck with all your work and who knows, maybe someday my son will be one of your students.
He really did enjoy the activity and was talking about it all day so you found a very appreciative audience in him.
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Some of the family members recorded short video clips describing their experience. We were delighted to meet the parents of one of the school students who has been involved in our research. The student’s mother described how much her daughter had valued the experience of carrying out a personal inquiry about urban heat islands as part of her GCSE in Geography.
We would like to thank all of our visitors for their enthusiasm and making it such a great day!
