ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Elaine,

What I always did was write out descriptions of the activities in detail including equipment, setup, and possible pitfalls to avoid.  Presenters go through this list of "experiments" and put them in whatever order they choose.  We allowed the Presenters to make up their own explanations and ask their own questions.  No two shows were ever exactally alike!  This kept things fun and interactive for everyone involved, audience and demonstrator.  On the other hand, this kind of freedom can be too much for some presenters to handle (especially new ones) and they feel overwhelmed.  What I would suggest in this case, is to prepare a list of thought provoking, open-ended questions for the presenter to ask audiences.  Hopefully this will give some confidence to new presenters.  Obviously we also encourage huge amounts of observation for new presenters to really see how shows should look before they are up there trying to do one:)
This method of having presenters take ownership of their shows worked well.  Presenters had to become well aquainted with the information they were talking about, but a ten-page selection of background information was usually all I needed to give presenters before they felt ready to have "science conversations" about a particular topic.  Really, that's all I great interactive Science Show is, a conversation about science with some really cool toys to talk about :)

I hope this helps ( a little bit:) feel free to ask any questions off list

Brian Hostetler
Former Gallery Leader- Physical Sciences
St. Louis Science Center


"Elaine.Regan" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Dear all,

Firstly apologies from cross-posting.

I am hoping that this question is not going to sound stupid, but here
goes....

Is there a format one should follow when writing shows, such as science
shows using science demos/explanations/audience participation. Using the
type of software for screen plays etc doesn't really seem to be the way to
go since there is only one real scene, the demo area, and one character, the
science magician, which leaves me with questions for how to write in the
audience participation part. The show that I have written and used as part
of my PhD project, evaluating such shows as a promotion tool in second level
schools, was written in 3 column format, column one for Magician activity,
column two for the audience activity and column three for links to the
appropriate parts of the Junior Certificate Science syllabus. Furthermore,
since it was a live show, improvisation from the audience's responses etc
was a large part of it.

Does anyone have some suggestions for me in the form of direction for
reading or where I might read some samples of such scripts?

Thanks,
Elaine

Elaine Regan
Department of Chemical and Environmental Science
University of Limerick
Ireland

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