I’ve been checking my inbox every five minutes this morning, because I am expecting to receive two of the coolest emails ever.  Let’s rewind a bit first.  Back in November I met with two groups of high school students from Forest Lawn High School and Bishop Carroll High School.  These students have joined the High School Science Café Program at TELUS Spark, where they came in for a training and leadership session for how to run their own Science Café back at their own high schools.  

If you have never been to a Science Café and you live in Calgary, you should check them out at the Ironwood Stage and Grill every last Thursday of the month (next one is Thursday, January 24^th with Jay Ingram and Dr. Valerie Sim discussing Science vs. the Media).  This provides an opportunity to hang out at a pub, enjoy a brew or some dinner, while listening to a panel discussion, followed by an open floor for questions and answers; and let me tell you – the Science Café goers sure know how to ask the BEST questions.

Obviously the youth science cafes can’t take place in pubs, but there are several ways to create an informal environment; science cafés are anything but boring, and nothing like a lecture (So each team is asked to find a non-classroom space in their school as a venue).  During the training session, students participated in their own science café hosted at TELUS Spark, titled “What Questions Do You Ask When Building A New Science Centre?” where they met Julie Bowen, VP of Content and Katherine Ziff, Exhibit Developer to discuss this question and feel out how a science café runs.  The teams explored the galleries and then together they brainstormed a list of questions they felt could make compelling science cafes.  The questions they came up with blew me away, and would all make outstanding Science Café topics:

- Can your eyes pop out if you sneeze with your eyes open?
- What caused the dancing plague of 1518?
- Why is chocolate so addicting?
- Why so breakups suck so much?
- Could you donate your brain?
- Will Star Trek ever be real?
- Overpopulation:  is there enough room for all of us?
- Why do we have toe hair?  (Edit: YES, REALLY, WHY DO HUMANS HAVE TOE HAIR!?)
- What is the speed of STD Transmission?
- Why is processed cheese processed?
- How does glue stick?
- If an airplane is on a treadmill, can it take off? 

So, I am waiting for the email that contains their final questions.  Although the students brainstormed together during the training session, they were encouraged to repeat this process at their schools, and to narrow down their ideas by crowdsourcing their student body to figure out which topics their peers would be most excited to hear about at their science café.   Today is their deadline to tell us their top 3 choices for science café topics.  From there, TELUS Spark has committed to matching these students with a panel of two speakers from either industry or academia who could best address at least one of their three questions to their student body (and we want to match them up with GREAT speakers: knowledgeable, engaging, and maybe even funny folks).  I’m really excited to hear what questions students will want to address – and more so, I’m excited for them to host events that they completely developed on their own. 

Yesterday, I received this note from the Forest Lawn group’s teacher liaison; here is an excerpt. 

“We are meeting tomorrow to go over the results of the student survey and should have some questions by tomorrow. My students were drawn to the topic of relationships so my guess is that our questions will relate to different aspects of love.”

Oh man.  These students are going to be creating something really special.   

If the High School Science Café program sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please get in touch at and we can discuss how you can join this initiative (Claudia.Bustos@sparkscience.ca).  This a free outreach program, and were students commit to hosting one or two science cafés in their high schools, and TELUS Spark provides them with the training (and a free visit to TELUS Spark with funds from NSERC Canada), tools and funding to produce their own speaker series.  And if you are not in high school anymore, and over 18, please join us at the Ironwood Stage and Grill on January 24^th 2011.   

-Claudia

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Imagine you have to explain puberty to a kid. But you have to write it down in advance, so you don’t get to listen or see any body language. And wait–it’s not just one kid. It’s thousands. And you’re not just speaking for  yourself, but an institution you care about.

You can probably imagine why I procrastinated over writing about puberty for the Being Human exhibit. The topic was embarrassing, and my attempts to explain it were worse.

That’s where I stayed stuck until I realized I was trying to do the wrong job. The science centre isn’t a place that would ”explain puberty to a kid.” I had to find a way to include information about puberty without acting like the expert.

I considered trying a pilot (mocking up a version of the exhibit for people to try–our usual way of figuring out what to do), but pilots show how people react to an activity. I needed to know what people thought was important. I needed to crowdsource.

Crowdsourcing can mean a lot of things. The website Kiva.org crowdsources philanthropy by connecting people who are willing to lend money with aspiring entrepreneurs in developing countries. Threadless.com solicits t-shirt designs from users and sells the ones that get the most votes. Then there’s wikipedia. [All of these examples are from Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing, which goes into way more detail than I can here.]

I decided to keep it simple. Being Human was scheduled to be the focus of the next Market Collective, so I made a big sign reading, “what should everyone know about being a teen?” and put out a thick stack of cards suggesting topics (zits, hair, hygiene, voice changing, hard-ons, periods, hormones and crushes–somehow I forgot to include breasts) along with straight pins so people could stick them on the wall.

The resulting notes were insightful, emotional, practical and funny. Here’s how we used them in the final graphic describing puberty for guys (there’s another for girls):

We also added a projector to the puberty area in Being Human and scanned the rest of the cards to make a slideshow.

Piloting and crowdsourcing have a lot in common. They tap into visitors’ knowledge and ideas. If you keep it simple they don’t require much time or money. They do require humility.

The differences are important. Piloting is all about how. How do people react? How does the exhibit work (or not)? How could it be improved? Crowdsourcing is better at what. What do people care about? What perspectives have you missed?

Knowing what question you’re trying to answer determines how to proceed. To pilot, mock up the final exhibit experience. When you’re crowdsourcing it’s often better not to approximate the final exhibit. When people perceive themselves as making an exhibit, they clam up or try to sound like a ‘science centre.’ But when visitors are intrigued by your questions and feel safe enough to respond honestly, they can be the source of some brilliant ideas.

–Katherine

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