The Outreach team was pleased to be invited to the Storymoja Hay Festival 2012 which was held at the Nairobi National Museum from 13th- 16th September.
The event was a cultural amalgamation of art, literature, film and yes, inclusive of that was the FabLab Outreach team!
Overall, our time spent there went on quite well. Each day, eager and excited children would flock around our Science Tent as the sight of ‘moving Legos’ mesmerized them. We got to taught them how to use the PicoCricket and let them make something on their own and program it!
The first day started off slow, the school which was show up, cancelled last minute so we basically had no one to teach. But luckily, one person did show up, David (aged 14) from Mombasa who was very keen on knowing how the PicoCricket worked and once he was shown the components he completely ran with it and came up with an awesome 3-wheeler that on on command, accelerates at different time intervals. One word to describe it: Impressive. Below is a photo of it:
Luckily, the next day brought about a deluge of kids. No time for rest for the team. Sensors were in high demand, beamers suddenly were unable to work and everybody needed to use the laptops. But being the awesome team that are, we pulled it off. And that is basically how the rest of days followed. By the end of our session on Sunday, we were exhausted but all in all, we had a blast! 🙂
But amidst all that hardwork, on saturday, after our session was complete, we spent the rest of the day going around the museum, doing what we do do best… having fun! 😀
It was a really interesting experience to see the ingenuity that some of these children had. They came with ideas that I bet none of the team would have ever thought of! It was great to see these young minds gaining and applying basic skills in robotics and programming and we hope that we were able to get them interested in something new.
For more photos from the festival, please visit our Facebook page and don’t forget to like it! …and follow us on Twitter too! 🙂
FabLab Nairobi Outreach 