Helen Regis
Observer
DragonCon Parade
I was just thinking about emotion and effect and how it's such a big part of what's happening at these events. And I think that just really reflecting back on what Vaughn and others I've just been saying and rereading the transcript Dragon Con briefing about how well okay, maybe the team wasn't necessarily able to convey the content of a scientific demonstration, but there were other things that were being conveyed that also matter. And yeah, that sense of connection, of excitement, of connectivity through emotion. I mean, I do think the learning experts should jump in. But I know, that's a big part of how I learned or how I care about things. And as we've all been learning in the last year and a half, it can be actually really hard for students to stay connected to learning on Zoom, because part of what's actually really hard is to get that feeling of connection to happen on Zoom. I mean, obviously, some of us we have to do it for our livelihoods, but it's hard for students to feel that they have skin in the game, sometimes through the tiles. And so, yeah. I think if part of what the engagement and the outreach is about is really creating a connection, creating a spark, that can then lead to reconnecting other events, other relationships. That is part of what parades are good at and what festivals are really good at is getting us to associate something with other things that we love or learning that we love something we didn't know we loved.