Learning Resources Discovery Museum

John met with Tom Elwick, the Learning Officer from the Discovery Museum and they looked through the Joseph Swan archive. They both get very excited about what they found and talked about how they might use the archive to inspire some work in the classroom. 

Each of the films has a task linked to it so have a go and let us know what you create.

As we open the Joseph Swan archive and start looking through the materials we’re draw to the rough sketches that are worked up to draughtsman quality pen and ink drawings. 

TASK 
Create a group doodle page or doodle book that can be built up over time. Then when the page or the book is full, go back and choose some of the sketches to work on again and turn into a more finished drawing.

We noticed one of the sketches had a hole cut out of it. We wondered why.......?

TASK 
Cut out a number of squares from magazines of newspapers to make a random collection of words and pictures. Put them all together and see if you can use that as inspiration for a drawing, story or poem.

You can see how the design of the lightbulb has changed since Swan’s first successful bulb. In the film you can see all types of bulb from different times and used for different things. 

TASK 
Can you design a new and improved light bulb and explain why your bulb is fit for the future? You might want to research how a lightbulb works and how they’ve changed over time, then imagine, in the future what a lightbulb might look like and what it might do.

Just as Joseph Swan discovered synthetic silk as a by-product or happy accident of the experiments he was making, can you come up with some new inventions by combining things in new ways.  

TASK 
Play word association the word dissociation. After a minute write down the most interesting combination of words. Choose one combination that jumps out at you as interesting and then explain how this new invention might work.