Right near the end of the trip, I took them into the Innovation Showcase. This area highlights Ohio people and companies that use science, technology and creativity to make the world a better place. One of the interactives I worked on was a Flash based computer game in which guests try to innovate upon the standard rubber duck. The game is called, "Build A Duck." By talking with your career team, you can make decisions on what different items you can add to the base duck. After you design the duck, it goes into production and a sales report is generated about how well you did. (Spoiler: if a guest designs a truly horrible duck, they can actually blow up the factory.)
The project team tested the game out on the Friends of COSI and during limited openings of the exhibit. We think we did a pretty good job.
Greg and his friends stopped at the build a duck and I gave them an overview of how to play. They spent the next twenty minutes trying out different duck combinations and were very excited when their duck did well. I was very pleased to see them having fun and repeating the program that our team developed.
I was even happier to learn that it had a lasting impression on him as you can see in his drawing from kindergarten.
This makes it all worth it.
PS The cave/man/purple dots drawing is the "Black Hole" which is located in the Space exhibit. The kids ran through that about 18 times.
