Activity E, the dreaded poster project. Of all the activities this is the one that few people have been looking forward to. The thought of a whole day researching and producing a poster seems very unexciting compared to the lab days (even the field trip) but it has to be done.
So after a cooked breakfast (only my 2nd of the week) I wander off to Friston to meet the rest of the group in our tutor room.
After a little prep talk from Brian we all moved on to the room dedicated for our project topic, Aluminium (if you're a spot you get Aluminium, if you're a rectangle its Energy), where we heard the subject areas on offer. From memory they were: Aluminium Recycling; Aluminium and Health; Uses of Aluminium; Aluminium and the Environment; Aluminium from the Earth. We then went and sat next to the subject area we were interested in and I picked Aluminium from the Earth with Pat and Michaela. We were then given a well-thumbed pack of information we could use as well as a group logon for the computer (this is mainly so the OU can limit our printing capability to a set budget of £2.50 with 5p per b&w print and 20p per colour print).
We then looked through the information pack trying to find a thread to follow. Our pack was a mixture of geology and processing based information with a few odd additions (the aluminium content of certain gemstones) which were soon abandoned. After 30 minutes of brainstorming we had a skeleton outline for our areas of research, we would each do 2 sheets of A4 and I agreed to cover the geology of bauxite (the principle ore of aluminium). Within another hour we have exhausted the information packet so it's off to the computer suite for some web-based research.
I pretty much knew how I would lay my section out and had gotten a lot of information from the information pack; I just needed to fill in the gaps. After lunch I had most of the information into Microsoft PowerPoint and it was just a case of tweaking the layout. Then disaster struck, we had a power blip and half the computers rebooted!!!! There were a few cries around the room, including a tutor who was working on something in front of me when the power went, so we waited for the PCs to boot and log back in. Fortunately Microsoft had saved the day with its auto recovery feature and so I had only lost a couple of tweaks, I think a lot of people saved their work at this point!!!
The afternoon went pretty quickly and by 3 I had my first draft printed in b&w so I could check the overall result. A few further tweaks were required which I made while I remembered and then I was done. All I had to do was to wait for my teammates to finish their contributions and we could see the final product. I spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the odd technical question (IT-based) and sorted out my bibliography. By 6 we were done and dusted and I was quite pleased with the results, then it was off for tea.
We reconvened at 7:15 and got to take a look at what the rectangles had done. The task was actually to critically review one of their posters, which proved slow going (4 people reaching a consensus of opinion often does) but I did take the opportunity to look at the other posters as well and they were all of a very high standard. Then we got to look at the comments the rectangles had made of our poster, some of which I agreed with others I didn't. Then the day was over.
In all it wasn't too bad a day. Creating a poster is a valuable skill to have and so it was a useful exercise. Last day tomorrow, well half day as we end at 12:30.
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