Retro-Tech Museum, TTW ’13

Now that I had a poster and eleven whole retro-tech items to display, I used various-sized boxes and a couple of sheets to arrange the items on a table.  I sent out an email to the YAC members who had signed up to be docents at the Retro-Tech Museum:

You are receiving this message because you signed up to be a docent at this week’s Retro-Tech Museum.  As a docent, here’s what you need to know and do.The Retro-Tech Museum is now set up in the Multi-Purpose Room.  The docent’s job will be to:

• uncover the display each afternoon
• pull out and turn on the transparency machine
•  turn on the 35mm slide viewing machine. 
•  sit next to the display to ensure visitors do not steal or touch anything
•  run the foot massage machine, should any visitors want to try using it.  The foot massage machine is currently under the Retro-Tech table.  Pull it out and keep it on the ground in front of you.  Invite people to try it for fun.
• collect the quizzes (see attached) which will be used as raffle tickets for a prize drawing on Friday.
• help visitors to answer questions if you know the answers.

At 5:00 p.m., please turn everything off and cover the display again.  If you have any questions, let me know.  Thanks for volunteering to be a docent at this year’s Retro-Tech Museum.  

Since I had learned that teens do NOT understand what OLD technology is, I created a quiz which would be used as a raffle drawing.  How?  I cut and pasted the photo of the display into a word document and identified each of the 11 items with a corresponding letter in a text box.  Then I listed the names of the items below to form a fill-in-the blank quiz.  My thinking was that I could encourage teens to interact with the museum, to expand their views of (HELLO!) what RETRO-technology is.  Plus, I could use the quizzes as a count for how many teens visited our museum.

Here’s what the quiz looked like.  If you’re interested, here’s what the Retro_Tech_Quiz looked like.  (Sorry, it’s a Word doc. The PDF version wouldn’t work.)

In the end, I gathered 40 quiz/raffle entries.  This will serve as a great starting count to improve upon for next year’s Teen Tech Week project.

Approximate time and cost involved for this project:

• 1 hour to write emails to staff and Teens (distribution lists already done)
• 1/2 hour to set up display
• 1 hour to create quiz
• 1/2 hour to dismantle & return items on display, including writing one thank you note
• 1/2 hour to create labels for raffle winner envelopes, and to notify selected winners
• Cost: $35, donated by YAC, for $5 Jamba Juice Gift Cards, used as incentives (for collecting old tech stuff) and for raffle prizes

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