More Arduinos WK 5

Week 5  Reflection Prompt:

Last week was my first direct experience with the arduino. I was first introduced to arduinos at a library conference, and then later in Lucie's Create Make Learn class. That said, I feel like my arduino brain fog is lifting and, while I really don't fully understand  WHY it works, I am slowly gaining confidence in HOW it works. I'm really glad we continued our arduino investigation this week while the software use was still fresh in my memory.

Experiment 3: Driving an RGB LED
We found that if we hold the resister wires down the colors rotated better.





Experiment 4: Driving Multiple LEDs
We had a problem uploading to the redboard. We discovered that we had the LED in backwards. The flat sided short leg goes into the negative position.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwDIPYofjRLbNTgxamd1eWdTNU1FNmg0NW1TdUptVjZ2M0lF/view?usp=sharing

Experiment 5: Reading a Button Press
We found the button hard to put in place because the span was larger that the redboard pins pictured in the diagram and we ended up bending the legs. We took another button and placed near to the picture as we could.





Experiment 6: Reading a Photoresistor
We had the LED on the wrong side again!









Experiment 7: Reading a Temperature Sensor
Faith burned her fingers on the temperature sensor! We had it wired backwards and once corrected it just took a little bit of time to cool down.

General Notes
We wish the breadboard model had all the numbers written in.
Why doesn't the copy code tab work? We ended up just copy and pasting.
We have one red redboard and one white redboard. The white one is so much easier to read!

In order for students to be successful I think it's important to balance free exploration with a series of increasingly challenging tasks such as we did. It would be important to encourage students to collaborate and help each other, which also may mean teaching students how to collaborate and work as part of a team. Students may also need guidance in accepting the iterative process and persistence as the tasks get harder. We found it helpful to have an open chromebook next to the computer we were working on as a guide for the diagram, the "what you should see" information, and the troubleshooting tips. It was also helpful to have a large enough space to spread materials out and keep them organized - again, a behavior that may need to be taught.

I am considering ways I can use LED's and sensors in my classroom. I read of a great idea where a science teacher taught an introductory energy unit, followed with an electrical energy unit, continued with arduinos to construct robotic machines, and finally held a competitive Lego Ev3 Robotics Unit. More generally, we could add an "Arduino Squad" to our student tech teams, use arduinos as an option for "traditional" projects, take coding programs such as Scratch a step further, and run workshops through our after school program. I can see also see using LED’s and Sensors as additional tools in our makerspace.

I think that more applications will emerge. Just this morning, for example, I was talking to a 5th grade student who has taken me up on my need to add some kind of sound proofing material on my classroom ceiling. I informally challenged a group of kids to come up with some affordable, attractive solutions. He has researched an idea and we were talking about coming up with some prototypes. We will need a way to measure the effectiveness of the material. Could we come up with a volume sensor? Is it already there in our kit? We will be investigating!