Posted By Alec Wood
Hi All

You may know that these days the national school curriculum is a much more complex beast than it was in my day. Apparently they now have a GCSE in Manufacturing and about 80 of the little darlings will be descending on our facility in a months time for a day for workshops and activities of an educational nature. Even our cunning plan of ceasing production and closing the facility has failed to discourage them from their intended assualt.

Apparently some kind soul has volunteered me to give them an hour workshop on the concepts of risk assessments.

If anyone has any hints, materials etc that may be of use I would be eternally grateful. I had enough problems with my own at 15-16, the thought of 80 of them fills me with extreme terror.

Alec Wood
Samsung Electronics

Posted By Geoff Burt
I can remember being asked to lecture at short notice to a similar group of aliens and it going down like a lead balloon.

The only time any interest was shown was when describing silly accidents - and by coincidence there are some in this months shp.

Perhaps talk round something like that and introduce the concepts as they arise? eg how could it have been avoided?

Posted By Jane Blunt
Humour is a good idea when dealing with young people, and getting audience participation.

One little idea I had was to give them a scenario - maybe chicken wants to cross road. What are the hazards, how do they arise, how likely is it that the chicken is going to get killed? Splat!

What of the safe system of work?

Engineering control - build him an underpass

PPE - kit him out with a coat that acts as a ramp for the cars to go over

Do it another way - fly! Does he have to remember to take off some distance from the road to clear the traffic?

Procedural control - teach him to look both ways and cross carefully. How trainable is a chicken?

Procedural control - only cross at night.

Procedural control with elements of engineering control - give him a pedestrian crossing with lights.

I'm sure you can think of good ideas - make it silly! Get them laughing, get them calling out ideas for protecting your chicken, or whatever. Maybe divide them into working groups and get them to propose the safe system of work for their chicken.

I used to do presentations for young people of this age group on engineering materials, and after having got over the ideas of the difference between tension and compression and how stone and other ceramics were pretty hopeless in tension, I got them to work in groups and design a bicycle for Fred Flintstone using the materials of the stoneage. They had to draw it on an overhead and describe it to the other groups. This was quite popular.

Good luck!

Jane