As the capital gears up for its first ever Science Festival, university students from across the city are being trained to engage young audiences – but do they stand to learn more from the experience than their students?
Mixing slimy goo, bouncing magical bubbles, digging in the dirt and manipulating lifelike robots – sounds like the perfect ingredients for a captivating kids’ movie. In fact, these are just a few of the experiences your children can have at Abu Dhabi’s first ever Science Festival happening 18th to 26th November both at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) and on the Corniche.
There’s no doubt the over 150 experiments, shows and workshops will brighten the eyes and spark the imaginations of more than 150,000 youngsters who are already scheduled to attend. But the young men and women who will be guiding the children through these hands-on experiences stand to gain at least as much as their young charges, if not more.
Over 500 students from five Abu Dhabi universities have been training hard in the last several weeks, learning everything they need to know to capture the attention and stimulate the minds of their young visitors. These older students have spent their time acquiring critical communication skills that are sure to serve them well long after their days with the Science Festival are over.
Why? According to Tom Pringle, a well-known science communicator and television personality also known as Dr Bunhead, the trick to teaching is engaging the senses.
“When we communicate, we communicate with the entire person - not just with words and thoughts but also with the senses and the emotions,” says Pringle, who headed up the training of the Science Communicators. “When we learn to start doing that, we have a much greater impact on the ease with which our students learn and the joy they feel with the process of learning and how much we then motivate them to continue life-long learning.”
The principal is simple, says Pringle. “If I just tell you that my name is Tom Pringle, you’re likely to forget that information in an hour or two. But if I tell you ‘my name is Tom as in short for tomato’, a different part of your brain starts to light up. And when I say ‘light up’, I do mean that if we were to scan your brain with an MRI scanner, we would see a different part of your brain actually start working.
“When I say this to the audience and they smile, then another part of the brain connected with emotional response is also lighting up. When those additional bits of brain light up, the raw information is more memorable and more enjoyable to absorb. With a positive emotional association, the ability to recall it becomes easier and it gets into the long term memory more easily.”
Pringle and his team have been teaching the Science Communicators in-training how to lead the young visitors to the Science Festival from the known to the unknown.
“On that journey, as long as we start with somewhere you’re very familiar with, it’s very easy for you to stop and go back and check your steps and then proceed forward again when you feel comfortable. The Science Communicators are not just thinking about how the knowledge is transferred but how we make the information familiar so that we can lead them onto something that is unfamiliar, while at the same time simplifying the language so it’s targeted to the audience.”
In addition to leading the young viewers on a journey of discovery, the Communicators will also be using what Pringle calls “hooks” to make sure the new information sticks.
“How do we make it visual? How do we add sounds to enrich it? What motions can we engage from the audience? This idea is called layering your hooks. In theatre, they’re constantly engaging our senses and our emotions, but if you go into a classroom, it’s engaging our minds, especially as we get older. What we’re trying to create is a whole body experience where you’ve got a balance between the hooks that you’re using and the information that you’re conveying.”
As the Science Festival draws closer, the university students are feeling confident and ready to take on the challenge. Student Sumaya Omar Saleh Al Zubaidi said, "I would’ve never imagined that I’m capable of this – standing up on stage, engaging an audience with a scientific demonstration and enjoying it. I just didn't know I had it in me before I did this training."
Mohamed Mira, another student and trainee Science Communicator, agreed. “This is the best training experience that I’ve ever had.
In two days I feel my confidence and communication skills have been lifted to a totally new level. These new skills will help me engage the children at the Festival and will be a great asset for my career and in life.”
Don’t miss Dr Bunhead and the rest of the Science Festival team at ADNEC and on the Corniche this November. For more information, visit www.abudhabisciencefestival.ae.
Laura Fulton
