BACKGROUND

The Mississippi Children’s Museum held their first annual Educational Fair in April of 2008. Although groundbreaking hadn’t even begun on their own facility, the museum partnered with the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum to provide a free, three-day program filled with education and entertainment for local students.

The “Stay in School: Soar into the Future” program, equipped with a Wizard of Oz theme, provided an opportunity to showcase the Mississippi Children’s Museum. Exhibits such as Mississippi Heritage, the Arts, Health, Literacy, the World at Work and Mississippi Heroes were previewed during the fair. In addition, all fifth grade students in the state were privilege to an interactive series about careers and the skills needed to succeed in the professional arena. The purpose of the fair was to explain the benefits of staying in school and receiving an education.

THE CHALLENGE

With an invitation to over 3,000 students, the educational fair aimed to create hands-on experiences that made learning seem less like a chore and more like fun. Volunteers led professional demonstrations, including a full recreation of an accident scene equipped with trauma teams and medevac helicopter. One of the presentations, entitled “Are You Smarter than a Scarecrow?” provided a game show atmosphere.

The game show would rotate groups of about 200 students at a time in front of a large presentation screen to take part in a fifteen or sixteen question quiz. The original idea was to create teams of five or six students from participating schools and have the rest of the children watch from the audience. However, one of the committee members wanted to involve all attendees, and pointed to Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for simultaneous voting on a large scale.

THE SOLUTION

With the use of TurningPoint audience response, each student was given a ResponseCard^® RF keypad to answer questions during the presentation. The keypads required the simple press of a button to respond, and proved no difficulty for the young participants. Presentations were also easily generated in TurningPoint, 100% native to PowerPoint^® to compile the series of questions using interactive slides. “What is the state flower of Mississippi?” “What American explorers first journeyed to the Pacific Northwest?” and “What is the name of Dorothy’s dog in The Wizard of Oz?” were just a few of the questions asked during the show. The enthusiasm of the students made for a sensational event.

“The exhibit was one of the highlights of the fair. TurningPoint really added to the presentation, and the students were extremely enthusiastic about participating with the ResponseCard keypads,” said volunteer Bill Hays. “We are excited about using TurningPoint again this year – it was a big success!”

CONCLUSION

The enormous success of the educational fair prompted the planning of a 2009 event with a core focus on geography. All fifth graders in the state of Mississippi are welcome to attend the program free of charge and see what the Mississippi Children’s Museum will offer upon its opening in 2010. When planning this year’s exhibits, Turning Technologies was on call to lend their audience response system for the wildly popular game show.

“Just to see the enthusiasm of the kids for learning, because it was presented in such an entertaining way with TurningPoint, was truly magical,” said gameshow chairman Susan Mayfield. “If even one child decided to stay in school because of the experience the education fair provided, it is well worth the effort. Many of our volunteers are now specifically requesting to work in the game show because of last year’s response.”

For more information about purchasing or renting a Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.