Anatomy of a Superlative Big Brain Adventure: 1 of 2 (Our Outputs)
Thanks to a series of dedicated individuals from Yesler Community Center, Seattle Parks Environmental Education, and Seattle University combined with funding from Seattle University, Seattle Parks Advisory Council, Seattle Neighborhoods, 4Culture, and individual contributors, Big Brains got the unanticipated privilege of engaging with our environment in a whole new way in 2017. These diverse interactions throughout the latter part of the year culminated in a truly superlative Big Brain voyage through Seattle’s Carkeek Park one chilly Saturday in November.
What are the outputs that indicate the success of this event? And what are the inputs that helped make it successful? Great questions. So glad you asked!
Outputs
First, our success criteria for Big Brain field trips are typically:
- Did Big Brains have lots of fun?
- Did Big Brains nerd it up?
In that order. (We’ve discussed the rationale for this perspective quite a bit.)
Now, for our evidence indicating success on both criteria:
Criteria 1: Lots of Fun indicators include smiles, intense curiosity, and spontaneously expressed enthusiasm:
We also regularly go out of our way to get input from Big Brains who we know to be the most brutal in their honesty. Typically, the feedback from those unfiltered Brains after an event corresponds well with our impressions during the event. In this case, we got an unalloyed, “It was fun!”, from all concerned parties, which was not remotely surprising to anyone.
Finally, we look for clues as to how a field trip may have affected our community after-the-fact. While this story is complicated by external factors, including other things going on in The BBSC or Yesler community around the time of the event, we still like to see BBSC participation and engagement levels increase a bit. But because this particular field trip had to occur during a time we were technically closed for renovations, the clues were slightly tougher to come by. However, when a couple of weeks after the event, we overheard one of our more brutally honest Brains tell his friend that, “Big Brains has the best field trips,” we felt pretty confident that a good time was had by all.
Criteria 2: Nerd it Up indicators include the number and quality of questions asked during the trip and, ideally, some suggestion that Big Brains came away from it with an expanded view of the world/universe and their individual/collective place in it. In this case, Big Brains were armed with 10 iPods and collectively captured over 700 photos and videos of their field trip experience, which, in our view, is a pretty nerdy thing to do. They also independently and enthusiastically peppered Park volunteers and employees with dozens of questions throughout the event:
And while it’s always tough to tell how/if this event expanded our Brains’ view of the world/universe and their individual/collective place in it, early indicators suggest at least some positive impressions. For instance, walking away from the park, one Big Brain spontaneously described herself as “a nature person.” And now that our open house is over, we expect to be referring back to the images that Big Brains captured on this field trip for artistic and technological inspiration in the coming year. So, in that sense, the final Nerdiness score for this event is still yet to be calculated, but because the Lots of Fun indicators were high, we expect the long-term Nerd level to follow in the same direction.
Part Two (Our Inputs) of Anatomy of a Superlative Big Brain Adventure is forthcoming. Stay tuned…