Research Symposium 2018

I was super close to not doing the Research Symposium this summer.  After all, I was no longer longing for a chance to do some teaching.  My partner from last year didn't have space this year.  My collaborators for making it into a design and marketing camp got divorced and couldn't get here.  Then I woke up with this theme in my head one morning and I had to go for it.

I gave these out to all my students and anyone who did it last year.  In the end we had 8 researchers finish.  Not as big as last year, but it was great!

In prep for the first workshop, I watched a bunch of amazing and inspiring TED talks.

Here is the playlist I created. Dream to Reality TED Talks.

From those TED talks I made this Slide show for Workshop 1

I also got the idea that we should make shirts using my favorite freezer paper screen printing that I learned from my friend Janetta way back.  But now I have a cricket, so we cut the letters using the cricket.  Much easier.  But it slowed down the help I could give for research.  So we need an extra shirt making session with 2 crickets if we do this again.  (I have already started warning my kids that we might not do it again, but they are adamant that they want to.)

Libby, Sarah and Ben all created their own dreams.  All the other researchers researched Dreamers.  It was fun to see what they came up with.
Libby spent hours "researching" and by that I mean watching youtube videos while pretending to research.  But she also did find a website for making logos.  She made several different ones for her app, "Guitarit."
She also helped the Ben and Sarah. 


Here are some of the logos designed by the kids.

Sarah took off and did her whole project with almost no help.  That was amazing!  She learned to use google draw and make some great stuff for her board to explain her Co-Z chair.

Ben's idea for a Tech Pen was deemed the "Most Useful" by the judges.  He was really sad that his shirt was so big.  But he enjoyed the process of coming up with his idea.  His Tech Pen is a whiteboard marker that isn't a marker.  It is powered by solar power, lights or lightning.  Also, milk apparently. 

Libby did a good job of selling her idea.  She painted her logo onto her shirt.  It looks pretty good!  I'll have to try to get a picture.  My favorite part with the tag line she came up with--"Guitarit--Where Practice Becomes Perfect."

Sarah got "Best Dream."  Her dream of a Co-Z desk chair was well thought out, well explained and just great!  And she really did 99% of it herself.  I only helped with formatting and cutting.  

I helped one of Libby's friends quite a bit with her project and she got "Best Research into a Dreamer"  I love her shirt that I made for her (with Libby's help) because she was out of town for the shirt making.  

 I love the atmosphere of growth that surrounds youth research, even if it is a bit stressful!
I didn't get a pictures of the great judges (including 2 of the researchers who couldn't finish projects but had time to judge) or the whole group of participants.  But it was a good night!