ALA Thursday Nov. 18, 2004

GAGGLE
Today we began learning about Crickets and their programming. The thursday group finished up the intro to soldering as well. Cricket programming was introduced in the form of making the cricket play notes, turn on motors, use sensors to turn on motors, and then using sensors to turn the motors both on and off. The students will be encouraged to continue practicing in the week after the holidays in the attempt to get them to think about how to use a cricket in their chain reaction scuplture. The session went well, with only a minimal amount of technical difficulty - some of the sensors didn't work. Soon we hope to have the students actually soldering their own sensors to use with the crickets. This activity will be done with the tuesday group after thanksgiving.

MURDER
today the thursday group mostly finished up working on their story idea. I believe 2 of the groups are ready to film when they return from the holidays. The rest need to continue working on the storyboards. Some of the kids are learning that they need to be a bit more detailed in their storyboard to understand exactly what they'd like to see on film. (Side note - some of the people working on the actual drawing of the storyboards are amazing visual artists. I'm hoping to convince them to be a part of the art cycle later in the year if they are not signed up for it.) When the holidays are over, the filming of the final stories will begin.