system layers and science in schools

I had the pleasure last week of two activities taking me out the office. The first was a trip to East Barnet School to see the installation of a series of science interactives developed under Project Faraday. We were part of the team that created the blueprints for the designs so it was great to see them in situ. The installations are built into the fabric of the building with the aim of exploding science out of the laboratory and into everyday school life. They included 60 year clock, a 3 storey high drop zone and the robot lab.

The second was participating in a Do Projects “walkshop” led by Adam Greenfield. At the moment I am pulling together some thinking around urban informatics for an internal project at Arup so I was using the event to think about the current creases in the fabric of London. As the Facebook page says, the aim of the walkshop was to look for

“Places where information is being collected by the network. Places where networked information is being displayed. Places where networked information is being acted upon, either by people directly, or by physical systems that affect the choices people have available to them.”

It was a great 90 minutes and reminded me of the value and stopping and looking at your environment. A collection of photos on flickr highlight some of the observations we made.