The Diary Room

[jmd1983]

Great news AnneJ!

[destresserai]

Damn and blast. My boss has just had a brainwave and is organising a team building day!!

Bloody waste of time if you ask me..........

One of the task he is setting is:-

The main task is to build a metre long bridge that is strong enough to hold two bags of sugar when they are placed on any part of it.

The materials are:-

• Masking Tape
• Scissors
• Newspaper
• Blu-Tack
• Straws
• 2 Bags of Sugar

Rules are:-

• Each person is responsible for only one item and can only touch their one allocated item
• If you require the use of one of the other items, you must attract the attention of the person responsible for it. They in turn must only touch their item. As an example you are responsible for the newspaper but need masking tape – you should attract the attention of the masking tape person – they in turn may need to attract the attention of the person responsible for the scissors to cut the tape to the required length and so on.


Do you guys have any idea what is the best way to go about this as I really do not want to have to think too much?????????

[anakin]

Fun. Perhaps call in sick? You might want to consider feeling ill a few days beforehand.

Porbably not the best idea though

[Beate]

Oh my God - how did I get on here???

[jmd1983]

hahahahaha destresserai that sounds so funny. good luck with that!

uhm have a look online?

[jmd1983]

newspaper bridge (team building, planning, organizing, problem solving, time management, creativity, lateral thinking)
Again, lots of variations to this, including using mterials other than newspapers - See also the ideas for working with aluminium baking foil in the baking foil games on the other team building page. These activities are good for reinforcing communications, support, interdepartmental co-operation themes. In teams (threes are best; teams of four or five can create 'passengers' unless you brief clearly for everyone to be involved and/or have each team appoint a team leader) using only the newspaper and Sellotape (alternatively known as scotch tape) issued, each team must construct a bridge, including floor-standing supports at each end and a horizontal span. The winning construction will be the one with the longest span between two floor-standing supports. If any additional floor-standing support is created, qualifying span measurement will be the longest length between any two of the floor-standing supports. There must be at least (say) 20cms clearance between the span and the floor. Any of the span lower than 20cms clearance will not count towards the measurement. The span must support certain objects issued (eg apple, chocolate bar, can of drink - consumable items are more fun) which must be placed (not fixed with Sellotape) on the span. The objects can be positioned anywhere along the length of the span, but must not touch the floor-standing supports. The floor-standing supports must be free-standing, ie not attached to the floor or any other object or surface. The use of Sellotape as 'guys' from the bridge to the floor or another object or surface is not allowed. Time allowed for planning and building and placing objects on the span is say 20 (max 45) minutes.

Variations to tower and bridge games:

Tower must support an object (eg a lemon, book, brick, plastic beaker of water, etc). Measurement is taken to height of supported object. If you issue an object to be supported at the top of a tower consider the well-being of the flooring and furniture. Beware safety and mess implications of certain objects, so avoid cups of coffee, glasses, etc.

Build a newspaper and tape bridge between two tables, to support the greatest weight (number of given objects).

Build the highest platform to support a person's weight, using only newspaper and tape - make sure there's plenty of newspaper for this version, ie, three big newspapers for each team. (Bear in mind that a platform is still a platform if it's only an inch high, although platforms of a few inches are perfectly feasible.)

Build the longest horizontal pier from a table top, supported with newspaper struts or not.

tips for newspaper constructions exercises
You can allocate as many sheets as you wish, although it really depends chiefly on the main purpose of the exercise, and then to an extent the duration and how many team members per team. As a general rule - the fewer the sheets the smaller the teams and the shorter the exercise. Lots of sheets and big teams require longer. Short timescales, big teams, lots of sheets = lots of chaos - which is ideal for demonstrating the need for leadership and management. Unless the purpose is leadership and managing the planning stage, avoid small numbers of sheets with large teams. Small teams don't need lots of sheets unless you make a rule to use all materials in order to put pressure on the planning and design stage. Examples of main purposes and numbers of sheets:

Very strong emphasis on preparation and design - 1-5 sheets - in pairs or threes.
Design, planning, preparation, team-working - 5-10 sheets - in threes or fours.
Team building, time-management, warm up, ice-breaker, with some chaos-management - 20 sheets - in fours, fives or sixes.
Managing a lot of chaos - 30 sheets and upwards - teams of six or more.
News paper construction exercises are terrifically flexible and useful. When you decide the activity purpose and rules, the important thing is to issue the same quantity of materials to each team.

other tips for newspaper construction activities
Building tips: It doesn't matter how big the sheets are, but big double pages offer the greatest scope for the towers.
Think about how much paper is issued as it changes the type of challenge: lots of paper makes it much easier and places less emphasis on planning. Very few sheets, or even just one sheet, increases the requirement for planning.
The main trick for the bridge and tower exercises (don't tell the delegates before the exercise) is to make long thin round-section struts, by rolling the sheets and fixing with sticky tape - Sellotape or scotch tape, or narrow masking tape instead. The struts can then be connected using various techniques, rather like girders. The same construction approach works well for the bridge too.
Round struts (tubes), and any other design of struts or sections, lose virtually all their strength if flattened or bent.
Very few newspaper exercise builders understand this fundamental point, and some fail to realise it even after completing the exercise, so it's worth pointing out during the review.
Square sections are not very strong. Triangular or circular sections work best, although the former are difficult to make.
It's possible to make a very tall tower (8-10 feet) using a telescopic design, which requires many sheets to be stuck together end-to-end, rolling together and then pulling out from the centre.
Most people make the mistake of forming big square section lengths or spans, which are inherently very weak and unstable. This is why the newspaper constructions are such good exercises - each one needs thinking about and planning and testing or people fall into traps and make simple mistakes.
The strongest design for weight-bearing is 'building blocks' of hexagonal tubes (six sides). This is the shape that naturally results if lots of circular tubes are compressed sideways together, and it's also the shape found in nature's beehive construction. Hexagonal tubes are difficult to make though and it's unlikely that people will think to do it. It's useful to make up a few samples to demonstrate in the review how strong the hexagonal construction is.
Less strong, but quicker is to make is lots of short rolled circular tubes, up to six inches high - make sure there's enough paper for the teams when using the human weight-bearing platform exercise.
Grouping the tubes together, stood on their ends and placing sufficient sheets on top to spread the person's weight usually is the easiest way to complete this exercise to a winning standard.
Alternatively, roll up lots of solid cylinders, again a few inches long. Grouped and fixed together on their ends these make an immensely strong platform.
The best way of finding answers is to try it - you should be doing that anyway if you are facilitating and running the session - you'll be amazed at how strong paper can be if it's folded and/or rolled and assembled with a bit of thought.
The weight bearing platform will only be a few inches high - we're not expecting to get someone up to the ceiling.
If all else fails, if you think about it, at it's simplest a team member could simply stand on all of their allotted sheets of paper. It'll only be a few millimetres high, but it's still a platform.
All of these exercises are generally tackled best by making the 'building block' elements, whether struts or tubes or any other shapes. And this emphasises one of the big lessons from the exercises - planning, and testing (time and materials permitting) are essential.

[jmd1983]

oh oops, it's a bit much...

[anakin]

Hahaha! Please tell me you copied and pasted and that it's not all original thought?!

[jmd1983]

haha oops did i forget to mention that i honestly stole it from a website?

[Beate]

I am assuming it's a fluke but all of a sudden I could get to FMUK from work today! Let's see how long it will last this time...