The Great Exhibition at Home project FAQs
For students: Does my competition entry need to be a video?
Yes, although the weekly challenges ask you to create exhibits in lots of forms, we ask for the final competition entry of your Great Exhibition at Home to be in a video format. This needs to be approximately 1 minute long and explain a bit more about your work for us. This is so that the judges can give every entry an equal chance and will have time to see everyone’s brilliant work. We’re not going to be too rigid with these timings so don’t worry if its a little longer than 1 minute
You don’t have to be on camera at all if you don’t want to be, you can speak over visuals, or even use subtitles if you would rather not talk. Some of the competition entries that we have received so far have used free software like KineMaster to add their images in digitally, and others have filmed their PowerPoint slides on a phone – from screens or printed out. The competition closes at the end of July, so there is lots of time to find the method that works for you!
When it’s ready you can submit your video entry here: https://www.big-ideas.org/athome/
What does my video entry need to look like?
The video submission should showcase your ‘Great Exhibition at Home’ and should relate in some way to the question ‘how can engineering help protect the planet?’
If you have read the introductory pages of the worksheets you will know that the original Great Exhibition was a big display of inventions from all around the world. Its aim was to showcase exciting ideas and designs for lots of people to come and see.
Your challenge then is to create your own Great Exhibition inside your home. We understand this is quite broad and can be taken in lots of different directions, we think this is exciting because we want to see what a ‘Great Exhibition at Home’ looks like for each of you.
One example for how you might do this is by displaying all the work you have created throughout the challenge around your house or in your window, to show others what you have done and educate them about how engineering is working to protect the planet.
Your 1 minute video just needs to show us your Great Exhibition so that we can best see the work you have done. It can take any form you like, some participants have spoken on camera and showed us around their exhibition, others have used animation, posters or PowerPoint presentations in their film rather than appearing on screen. For more inspiration on creating a ‘Great Exhibition at Home’ video see pages 18-20 of the student worksheets.
For educators: Do my students need to complete all the worksheets to enter the competition?
Not at all! Participants can use as many, or as few of the worksheets as they like. To enter the competition students must submit a one minute challenge video showcasing their Great Exhibition at Home and how it answers the question ‘How can Engineering help protect the planet?’ For those that do want it, we’ve got 7 weeks of exciting content which we’ll be working through week by week, but you can do in any order – and if you send us your challenge content, we can share it on our social media and in our newsletters.
How do I use the resources available to plan a lesson?
The Educators digital resource pack can be used by educators (so teachers, parents and carers) to learn all about the project and how to take part. You can also get a bit more information generally, about the Great exhibition of 1851, the exhibits (or 1851ders) and Inspiring Engineers that will be featured in the pack. You can then use the weekly challenge worksheets to shape your lessons. These worksheets are printer friendly and there are 7 weeks of content. Each week features one 1851der and one Inspiring Engineer plus two challenges for your students to take part in. These challenges vary from things that are a bit more imaginative, such as designing a new, sustainable way to generate energy, to more practical activities, such as growing in your home without soil.
When it’s ready you can submit your video entry here: