Circuits, "It as the best of times, it was the worst of times....." WK 4




This week's virtual tasks started smoothly as I enjoyed the videos, especially Jay Silver's Ted Talk, "Hack a Banana." I love the idea of going out into the woods and just making something. What a fun way to explore the design process TMI with children. "Amelia's Squishy Circuit" Ted Talk gave me a new perspective on the value of the tinkering in regards to handicaps. This is an enlightening video for parents, teachers and kids.

I liked the simplicity of presentations in https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/ and feel that this could be used whole group or by children independently. The website could be open for use in the classroom or maker space as needed and/or students could simply bookmark it on their chromebooks or ipads.

I started my physical exploration of circuits with Makey Makey. I have introduced it to students before but (as often seems to happen) they took it to a much more advanced level than I did. I wanted to try connecting a pencil to my computer so that when I wrote it would make sounds. The pencil alone didn't work (not a conductor?) so I wrapped the pencil in tin foil. I tried the paper alone, then I put foil under the paper, and ultimately decided to write directly on the foil, putting a little foil tab by the pencil lead that you complete the circuit with the foil. A student came in and we hooked up 2 markers in this way so that we could make music together. Fun! I am reminded that Makey Makeys are very user friendly and can be applied to many learning and tinkering situations. Faith and I will definitely have these in our maker space. I am thinking about creating stations in my engineering classes that present design challenges, one of which would be a Makey Makey station. I think this would be a fun and powerful way for students to choose a station, work through the design stages, and reflect on their process with others.

Musical pens video:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwDIPYofjRLbN2IxcmhqQVJOOU9VTldrY2VSS0RHSVlpdnVr

So now we move on to the arduino. Faith and I started well before 7am this morning to try and figure things out. After a fashion we realized we needed an admin password to download the software. Our super IT guy, Jeremy, downloaded it mid morning. Faith and I worked through lunch, moving closer to an understanding of setting up the red board and copying the code, but the program wouldn't let us upload it even after it was verified. So... back comes Jeremy, who decided to (to the best of my understanding) install the software on Windows because we were trying an internet plug in and Chrome extensions. So after our staff meeting Faith and I did it!

Along the way I was thinking that this is all too complicated for me and the kids. However, when we got it to work, I began to think that some of our students could really be successful with arduinos, especially given that you can copy and paste code as a starting point. We will put a couple in the maker space and see where it leads.

Arduino experiments 1 & 2 video
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwDIPYofjRLbWnFWMEVDTU5qdFB0ODVQaUxQVzB2YklZUjJN

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 4, 2017 at 6:14 PM

    ah.... I forgot to tell you that Arduino needs to be installed on a Pc or Mac. Installing it in a 'managed network' environment can sometimes be a barrier.. Glad Jeremy was able to help.
    There is a program called Code Bender that can be used on Chromebooks.
    And although they are going through a transition.. I think they do have classroom subscription pricing if it turns out to be something that a Chromebook school wants to get up and running. https://codebender.cc/

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