Hundreds of primary and intermediate students from across the region delved into a world of science and technology at this year’s Cawthron INSPIRE festival.
The annual event, which was held at Garin College on 31 August and 1 September, featured 45 workshops presented by a marvel of experts from the likes of the Cawthron, Te Pūkenga, universities and other institutes.
The matters of each workshop included electronics, body function, coding and artificial intelligence, special effects make-up, climate change, chaos theory, psychology, emergency medicine and robotics.
Co-ordinator Annabel Boyes says the HeartOtago research group from the University of Otago pumped a series of workshops at the event for the first time, which included a heart dissection.
She says Dr Angela ‘Bones’ Clark from The Science of Crime workshop based in Dunedin also presented forensic science workshops for students to unleash their inner detective by analysing forensic evidence and conducting fingerprint and blood spatter examinations.
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“INSPIRE workshops are fun and intriguing and go beyond the ordinary, and are suitable for all students who love to think dynamically and creatively,” Annabel says.
“I’m hoping the students all have fun, first and foremost, but also hopefully they’ll get to have some hands-on experiences they wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to and really to get have a play around that with an expert in the field.”
