Neurocamp Reflections

This year was the second year in a row Teen Neuroscience Alliance hosted Neurocamp. But this year was different from the last year, for a few key reasons.

If you want to see our Scratch group's project, click here!

It was more than a series of lectures.

Last year's Neurocamp was simple - make a few powerpoint presentations, present them to a group of elementary and middle-schoolers over Zoom. But we struggled to keep parents and kids interested. We did not add enough speaker-audience interaction, and the interactions we tried to add felt forced and fake, with most of our audience tuning in during meals or when they were otherwise busy doing something else. Eventually, we had to end the camp early.

This year was different. We still kept lectures, as they were useful to teach a lot of information in a short time, but lectures were only 15-20 minutes at most. Most of the time was dedicated to breakout rooms and small-group work.

It was set over a shorter time-frame.

Last year's neurocamp was 6 weeks long, with a one-hour meeting every week. We cut this timeframe down by a half to three weeks, with two one-hour meetings every weekend. This was more effective, as students tended to forget information learned in the span of a week, but also was a shorter commitment than 6 weeks, making it less likely for students to drop out.

The content was adjusted to be interesting to kids.

Last year we focused on teaching topics that would be interesting to older middle schoolers or high schoolers, like the neurobiological basis of mental illness or specific details about neuroanatomy. But young children do not have the stamina to listen to such lectures and have different questions about the brain. We created the curriculum as we went along, taking in feedback along the way.

Looking for recordings? Due to privacy reasons, we did not record the meetings, as we wanted the participants to open their cameras. But we will be providing recorded lectures sometime in the near future, so look out for them on youtube!

Gallary!