During the Easter holidays, the main highlight was the so-called 'Easter School'. It wasn't much like a school since the task was totally different than expected. Here it is!

First of all was the getting there. Transport was included in the price of £0.00. We got to the site by coach, having to share it with pupils from other schools too. I thought I was going to make loads of new friends.

The task for the first of the three days wasn't said until later. We kick-started the day with a stadium tour, then some hula-hoop challenges. We then went back inside the Playing for Success room to get our briefing. It was to design a new North Stand for Worcester Warriors Rugby Club, where we currently were sitting.

The experience was unusual. Since one member of my team dropped out, I had to rely on one friend, and someone I didn't know. What's worse, we had to use Apple Macs to do our work, such as a 'digital scrapbook' to record our work. It wasn't the fact that we had Apple MacBooks, just that I had no past experience on one, so the work was deadly slow. We had to rummage through the architecture work, including building a model stand out of flimsy straws, pins, and tape, and the day just came and went extremely slowly. I didn't particularly enjoy it, yet.

The second day's concept was exactly the same, until we finished the architecture work. A representative from npower came in to give a lesson about sustainability. npower was WRFC's sponsor, so they obviously had to come in to look the part. We took the sustainability ideas into action and added them to our ultimate design.

Then we had a spanner in the works. Literally. Each group were given a card and we had to anticipate a series of problems. We had to resolve an issue about lighting and about the light not going onto the pitch, so the grass might not grow so well. An expert architect shared his ideas with us and we came to a solution, including using transparent ingredients.

The final day came and we were given a late start by one hour. We had to present our ideas to persuade the judges to buy our stand. So, we used software called Keynote to present our stand. I wasn't particularly familiar with this, so it perhaps wasn't as useful as it could have been to me. Sure, this was a good thing because now I am familiar with Apple Macs, but this consequently meant we were off at a slow start. We wrote scripts for us to read out, and then found that we had ages left at the end of the day. So we just sat around and helped the other group, also from our school.

Presentation evening came, but I wasn't unnerved. I thought that if I got this wrong it could potentially cost the competition, but that may not be the case. We took our turns presenting, and we were third to compete. When we all finished our three minutes, we took a light break and then it was the sixth-formers' turns. They weren't competing against each other, contrary to some people's thoughts, but enjoyed the night, nonetheless.

I couldn't help but realise that my form tutor was sitting amongst the crowd, and she came up to introduce herself to my sister, who was also there. She already had the background information of her, through me. But this is just something minor, don't worry to much about this!

Following this, I trekked off to get autographs from the players who had already arrived in the room.

The results came out, and they were satisfactory. Well, it was more than that. Runners up was a team from my school, but not mine, Team Wood. When this was announced, I thought to myself, 'If they won 2nd place, then I must have got the 1st place.' And, yes, I did! My team, Team Murphy, were the overall winners of a family ticket, and a signed programme at least.

We graduated from the npowering Learning Easter School 2008 and were awarded with a qualification, this being a Bronze Science Communications Award. Next year I endeavour to achieve the Silver Award. That would be great!

Now, time for some groans. My silly American dictionary doesn't approve of some of the specialised words in this great blog. Here they are, in order of appearance:

MacBook,
npower,
WRFC,
realise,
programme,
npowering,
endeavour,
specialised,
Wickedo Gangsta.

Hope you have enjoyed reading -most- of this blog.

Winer Idimbite,
Wickedo Gangsta.

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Winer Idimbite was listening to Korn - Somebody Someone on the famous Windows Media Player during the creation of this blog! <-{-W-}->
via FoxyTunes