VAPS Conference - Scienceworks In-Action Day

VAPS Conference: Cultivating Curiosity: Philosophy and STEM

The first day of the 2018 VAPS conference kicked off with an in-action Day at Scienceworks Museum in Spotswood on Thursday 13th September.

We had 30 eager students ready to engage in a science-focussed philosophical community of inquiry. We had two groups of 15 students, each group paired with an expert facilitator. One with Dr. Tim Sprod, and one with Prof. Rob Wilson.

The students engaged in two communities on inquiry. The first of which used a stimulus chosen by each of our facilitators.

Rob chose an exhibit which allows students to be in a room and create sounds which then affected the lighting of the room. The purpose of which was to see how sound and light could affect your mood, e.g. what happened when scary sounds came on and all the lights turned dark red?

Tim chose to work with a display about artificial intelligence and also CSIRAC, the fourth computer ever created, which is a recent acquisition for Scienceworks  You can see a recording of Tim's group below.

The second stimulus was the same for both groups. Everyone went to see a planetarium show about Earth's place in the universe. Both groups then split off and conducted separate communities of inquiry about this stimulus.

Dr. Tim Sprod Facilitating a session at Scienceworks

Recordings of both of Tim's sessions are available on the VAPS website and also on youtube.