Behind the scenes in At-Bristol’s Learning team
Blogging science to life
Tue 24 January 2012, Written by: Krysten
For little over a year now I have been volunteering with At-Bristol. I have been fortunate enough to be involved with many different activities and events, including Toddler Takeover days, school workshops and even outreach at the Bristol Children’s Hospital!
While volunteering, I saw glimpses of what happens “behind the scenes” in At-Bristol. Significant preparation is required to put together the programming that visitors get to enjoy and experience. After seeing this I wanted to become more involved with the development aspects of At-Bristol, so I applied to become the Learning intern.
For three months from July to September, I came in two days each week to work with the At-Bristol Learning team. As the Learning intern I was able to become involved with many different projects including using my skills as an educator to update and develop new trails around the venue for schools to follow during their visits to At-Bristol. The trails direct students to specific exhibits and ask students questions relating to the science involved in the exhibits. Seeing the Trails on the At-Bristol website and in use on the floor was exciting and personally very satisfying! Similarly, I created activities for teachers to use with their classes in conjunction with two of the workshops that make up part of At-Bristol’s schools programme .
I was lucky enough to be able to work inter-departmentally with the Exhibitions department – I conducted some visitor research and spent many days speaking one-on-one with visitors to ask what they thought about the new All about us experience. The data I collected was later used for a report to measure the success of the All About Us exhibition. It was great to be able to interact with visitors and learn lots about evaluation techniques at the same time. Other activities I got involved with were updating school workshop materials, planning activities for a Toddler Takeover day, and I surveyed visitor feedback on the Seasonal Night Sky planetarium show. From what I saw visitors love the planetarium! As well as taking responsibility for the work that I was involved with and contributed towards I felt appreciated by the department.
Working with the Learning team was great! Everyone is so nice and extremely friendly. At-Bristol made me feel that I was part of the team and everyone was willing to help answer all of my questions! The internship itself was very flexible and able to accommodate my other commitments. I was able to become involved with projects that interested me and expand/improve upon my skills set. I learned more about science communication and programming development than I could have imagined. I would highly recommend participation in an internship - the experience itself and the skills that you take away are invaluable. I will certainly use what I have learned in the future!
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