On Tuesday, the 15th of November the Transition Year students went on a day trip to the AWS Think Big Space in Tallaght across from The Square Shopping Centre, Tallaght. They left at 12:15pm and arrived at 1pm. Here they took part in lots of activities, some of these activities were the Sphero station, the coding station, a practical engineering station and at the end they made ice-cream. Each station lasted 25 minutes.
The first station was the Sphero station, this is where they had little RC balls that had a motor in them. They learned the basic controls and had duels in a grid and had to try to knock one another out. The second station was lego engineering. They learned to code their lego robot by giving a sequence for the robot to repeat.They learned about robots and how important they are in our day to day life. The next station was practical engineering. They had three groups with 3-4 in each group. They all had the same tools which were spaghetti, cocktail sticks, lollipop sticks and marshmallows. The students had to try to build a big tower and balance a golf ball on top for 10 seconds. This replicated the guy's idea who was teaching the students. He said the golf ball replicated a signal and the higher we got it the stronger it would be.
Lastly the students went onto the final station where they made ice-cream. They had ice in a ziplock bag, they added salt to the ice to make it colder, then they filled a second ziplock bag with ½ tbsp of sugar, condensed milk and cream. They closed the second ziplock bag with the liquid ingredients in it and put it in the bigger ziplock bag. They surrounded the small ziplock bag with ice from the other one. They shook it until they had ice-cream. The students put sprinkles on their ice-cream and ate it. They then headed back for the school, arriving back at 3:30pm. They all had a great time together and learned lots of new information.
The event was hosted by the Inspiring the Future Ireland project, this project is led by the South Dublin county partnership, a non profit charity located in Belgard Square, Tallaght.
Cian Burke & Rian Gannon - TY Press
