We came up with the idea of a "Gadgets and Gizmos" day after hearing about something similar a group in Derbyshire were doing. I went to visit the Derbyshire day with Brian and Chris from Ampthill where we learnt all about lots of different gadgets and gizmos.
Brian and Chris had such a great time in Derbyshire that they decided they wanted to take the lead when we had our very own Gadget day.
When the day came Brian and Chris took control of setting everything up and they had a fantastic time showing all of the gadgets to people. Even when they weren't sure about something a quick prompt from a member of staff and they were off again explaining and demonstrating stuff. It was fantastic to see them so confident and just "light up" whilst showing visitors around everything.
time a colouring app was open, when the lady touched the screen, colour appeared on it, when she dragged her finger across the screen a coloured line appeared. Then the lady stopped and looked at her finger as if questioning where the colours had come from? At this point a member of staff who had been observing this stepped in and drew a line too, the lady smiled and looked at the member of staff. Using very few words and mostly gesture together they began to figure it out, the member of staff showed the lady how to change the colour and after a
while she had taken full control, choosing red to draw a cat, before proudly showing it to her support staff.
Later in the day I saw the same lady with a different member of staff putting into practice what she had learnt when drawing her red cat, only this time she was creating her own puppet on the iPad. A member of staff was showing the lady through the whole process and encouraging her to make a choice each step of the way. Should the puppet be purple or green? Eyes or funky sunglasses? A butterfly or strawberry for a nose? At the end, when the puppet was finished, it started to dance along to music- and then magic - they started laughing and dancing along to the puppet together.