The Connective Detective Workshop Series
This past 23/24 school year we developed and delivered our first programme that is exclusively for primary school students (5th/6th class): The Connective Detective!
When the decision was made to develop a new programme for primary schools, the theme of telecommunications, telecommunications infrastructure and connectivity was set very quickly, as it was of importance to both our partners Dublin City Council/ CONNECT research center. Since it was important to us to include the knowledge of the people who are working on this topic on a daily basis, this program is the result of intensive work with the CONNECT researchers and the employees of the DCC Telecoms Unit.
After the name was set, we also invested some time to include the ‘connective’ theme in the workshops and in the visual identity to make it appealing for the audience. Looking at the designs now, we all feel it was absolutely worth it!
The workshop series itself is divided into three workshops.
The first workshop introduces the students to communication in general and how telecommunications changed over the last years. Followed by workshop two, in which they explore telecommunications infrastructure, learn about how the internet operates and what a network & connectivity is. In the last workshop, together with the students, we take a look into the future of telecommunications and build our own prototypes of telecommunications infrastructure.
In all three workshops we combine fun, hands-on activities with useful knowledge about telecommunications to create a environment were students can explore.
As the feedback was very positive, we are looking forward to offering a more advanced version of the Connective Detective in the coming school year 24/25.
“I would just like to thank you for your thoroughly enjoyable workshops. The children and myself really enjoyed them and we learned so much over the two days.” (teacher feedback)
“I loved everything, especially playing with the old phones." (student feedback)
