Event(s) Summary
Number of Events Organized During Brain Awareness Week:
1 Night with 11 different brain stations
Year:
2016
Type of Events Held:
- Other
- Other: Public Hands on Activity Night
Target Audiences:
- Elementary school students(1-5)
- General Public
- High School students(9-12)
- Middle school students(6-8)
- Patients & Caregivers
- University students
Approximate Number of People Reached:
150
Details of Major Brain Awareness Week Events/Activities:
The objective of our night was to host a large public night for adults and children to come learn about the brain. This was Wyoming’s first brain awareness event. Children were given passports with the 11 different stations on them and received a sticker for each station they completed. When they finished they were given small stuffed brains, a word search, coloring sheets, and a ruler with the University of Wyoming Neuroscience Logo (adults were welcome to the gifts as well). I think we were extremely successful with our outreach night with a multitude of compliments on the night and many questions about when we will be hosting another. We also had catering of snacks and drinks for the participants and we decorated the room we held the event in with our scientific posters so the public could learn about the research happening in neuroscience at the university. The event was entirely run by graduate students in neuroscience with the aid of the director of the program. Stations we organized included: Brain hat coloring and making neurons out of pipe cleaners, Face painting of neurons, Bean bag toss with prism goggles, Stroop test activities, Touch station with blind boxes, mazes and how temperature affects sensation, Vision station with finding your blind spot, optical illusions, and colorblind tests, Hearing station testing how high of frequencies you can hear, Taste/Smell station with guess the smell, are you a supertaster, and tasting a lemon after a miracle fruit tablet, Model brains of different species, Microscopes to visualize brain slides of different animals and human tissue, and a Backyard Brain kit where we used the human-human interface and the dancing cockroach leg packages. The human-human interface was a hit
Event Planning & Publicity
Publicity Methods Used:
- Advertisements
- Calendar Listings (newspapers, radio, television)
- Posters/Flyers
- Press Release/Media Advisory
- Social Media
Which of These Publicity Methods Was The Most Successful?
Resources
Of the Dana Foundation publications/resources distributed at your event(s), if any, please indicate the three most popular. Please choose up to three. If "other," please indicate below:
- Q&A: Answering Your Questions About Brain Research
- It’s Mindboggling!
- More Mindbogglers!
Other Dana Foundation Materials Distributed:
- Coloring Pages
What downloadable materials from the Foundation did you use for your events?
- Puzzles: Mindboggling Series
- Mindboggling Coloring Sheets
What other downloadable materials would you like the Foundation to provide?
- Lesson Plans
- Activities/Experiments
Which BAW graphic materials did you use in publicizing your events?
- BAW Logos
- BAW Facebook Cover Photo
Feedback & Keys to Success
How do you feel BAW participation benefited your organization and the local community?
Our local community was extremely receptive of our event. Many of them did not even know we had a neuroscience program at our university. Some immediate outcomes included myself being asked to run a mini brain awareness day for young women in science who are curious about careers in neuroscience. From our brain awareness night I was able to reach 80 more young women 7-12th grade from rural places in wyoming and get them excited about the brain.
Please share any suggestions or lessons learned that may help others plan future events:
Since we did tables that all had different stations, we felt as though we needed a larger space. Additionally, we had some elderly people show up and we did not think about getting wheelchairs around the event.
Did/do you like our Facebook page?
Yes
Was the information provided on Facebook useful?
The public brain instructional video of what brain awareness is was great! I think more public videos such as this would be great.
