Kspace Explored

We'd heard on the grapevine about an area known as Kspace at the National Museum where one could build their own robot then time travel into a place of Australian history to explore! Sounded like the perfect activity to get out of the house on a cold Wednesday afternoon during school holidays! We coerced seasoned Kspace adventurers, the Walter clan to join us and take us through this interactive game.

Kspace took 3 years to build, costing $2 millions and opened exactly a year ago. Our first stage in this three part experience, was to design our own robot. Each person is positioned in front of a massive touch screen with 4 people making up a team. Using the touch screen, the kids selected different types of parts for their robots head, body, arms and legs. Each section could then be manipulated in relation to the pattern and colour. This process needed to be completed within a 5 minute time frame before a photo was taken of the participant and superimposed onto the head of the robot! Giggles all round as their robot did a little dance!

Waiting to start

Listening to instructions!

Choices, choices!

Katy, Max, Mira and Ella's robots.

Photo being taken.

Robots dancing!!

From the Design Studio we were herded into the darken space of the Time Pod. Here the journey into the past began. A video clip explaining where they were and what was happening around them beamed up on more massive screens. This time however, each child using their own control panels to explore and completed missions unique to that time and place. These were done both as a solo participant and also as one robot where each participant controlled a part of the robot (i.e. Katy was responsible for moving the robots head to look around).

The fun was quickly over and we headed into the Cool Down area, where we were suppose to learn and reflect....ours just emailed their robot and joined the queue for another turn!!

No doubt we will return on another rainy day to complete another time travel mission!