Creative play with digital media students

The day began in the maker space, along with the digital media students. The digital media tutor called Mark explained to us that we were going to be placed randomly selected groups and make a tower only using paper and no other materials. My team was nice however they were quite quiet, me and Decland tried to lead the conversation and get everyone talking and sharing, they opened up a but but even by the end of the day some members of the group weren't really talking. The first task was building the tallest tower using only paper and no other materials and at the top of the tower an egg for fifteen seconds. I felt like only half of our group were trying to work quickly and because we were working at a slightly slower pace to other groups it hindered the potential of the final product. As a team we decided that it was best to have the egg protected so it wouldn't die.


 With our team being number one we were made to present first, and then we were told it would be measured from to to where the egg was not the actual height of the tower. So we decided to go with our original idea and place the egg in the basket. As all the other groups presented, all of the tallest towers used a similar technique to making their tower. They also decided to place the egg on top of the tower and risk the egg falling. Me and Decland were quite annoyed by this and Decland insisted that we should be able to remeasure, and even so we only ended up in third place.

 The second task was definitely more enjoyable and we started off great but as time went on, energy levels dipped and the group was happy with what we created. We were meant drop the egg from the third story and the slowest and safest egg was the winner. We all immediately agreed that the parachute was the best option and I knew that the surface area of the parachute would slow it down the most. The second task was far more enjoyable because we had become acquainted as a group and we could perform tests on how quickly the egg dropped. I think we had the slowest falling egg, but fell short in the design category, to be fair another group used fairly lights and how could we compete with that. I did want to keep pushing the team to keep improving the parachute and bottle used to hold the egg, but the team was happy with end result and I thought it would be best to keep everyone happy then be pushy and overly-competitive. If i could improve on my own speed, and be able to finish what i had been tasked with quicker i could help out with other group members who were struggling. Definitely great day to mess about and work in groups.