Weekly Plan: May 23 - May 27

Monday 5/23
Panther at the Museum (Myles and Gabe)
IR Controlled Cars; Day 6
Floor Staff Meeting: 5:40-6:30

Tuesday 5/24
Northside (Saafir)
Meet with electrician
Whimsical car example
Introduce new materials and ideas
ALA (Jonathon, Karie, and Gabe)
End-of-the-year projects

Wednesday 5/25
ALA at the Museum (Jonathon, Myles, and Gabe)
End of the year projects
Panther (Myles and Gabe)
End of the year car race and pizza party
Collect info for the students for the summer
Northside (Saafir)
Display and parade cars

Thursday 5/26
ALA canceled
Northside & Panther closed until Wednesday 6/1
Dino Patron event (6-9)

Friday 5/27
Northside (Saafir)
Meet with Santiago and Felipe to work on summer schedule

catchin up

So I have a little catchin up to do, but I think I can get it done all in one entry. Here we go. We'll start way back at the ending days of our successful "light cycle". On Wednesday, April 20th, I gathered all the light sculptures the kids had created including the light lanterns, the homemade flashlights, and the night lights and organized a gallery space in the teen room at the panther boys and girls club. Then I had jazmine craft fliers to pass out to all the kids, inviting to the first annual DesignIT "glow in the dark gallery night", snacks included, opening at 5:15pm. We dimmed the lights and had a sizeable crowd gather to view the pieces. And a total coincidence hieghtened the art gallery experience when Mrs. Mays, the panther art teacher, closed the gym that afternoon to have a regional boys and girls club art show right next door. So not only did I get to view some work other kids had done in the art rooms around the metroplex, but art teachers from other clubs got to view our program's work, and they loved it. Among our sculptures, I included an eye-catching static electricity ball from the museum to draw a larger audience and encourage hands-on participitation. I also had our kids stand behind thier pieces and discuss their inventions with curious onlookers.

The gallery night at panther was so successful, I decided it was unfair for our museum staff not to be able to see our work in person, so the following Wednesday, we took the kids and their artwork to the museum. I spent some time handing out fliers of my own to staff around the museum to come see us on their way out of work. We set up a table just like our gallery at panther just inside "kid's stuff", and I had four of the eight kids present man the tables, while the others checked out the gallery, then they switched. Not only did staff have some questions for the artists, but visitors attended as well. The interaction between our kids and visitors was really neat to watch. Marcus and Dominic did a great job. Both "gallery nights" were a blast as far as final culminating events for our light cycle.

We did try one more light cycle activity on Monday,April 25th that Gabe and I discovered would be fun and could not be left out, and was included at our museum "glow in the dark gallery night" on the 27th. Here's the breakdown...

Activity 1: "Cricket strobe lights"

Big Idea: Continue educating kids on how to program l.e.d.'s in a fun, new and challenging way

Dates:Monday, April 25th

Groups Participating: panther boys and girls club kids

Attendance: 4 to 6 kids

Materials:
Software: laptops, transfer cables, transfer crickets, crickets, motor cables, l.e.d.'s
Other: stereo and music

Directions: Each participant has a laptop and l.e.d. setup. By using the cricket program listed under the "light" activity under "things to try" on the pie network website(www.pienetwork.org) one can make the l.e.d.'s blink in rhythm and with certain strength. to make it a game, simply turn on a song and see who can match their l.e.d. to the rhythm the fastest

Associated Skills: l.e.d. programing, rhythm skills

Associated Concepts: confidence in programming, competing with peers in a fun, safe, educational way

Best Part: Bobbin' your head tryin to match your "strobe light" to the kids' favorite songs

Hardest Part: Matching the strobe's rhythm to the music. Its tougher than you think!

Culminating Event: Museum glow in the dark gallery night

Improvements: Not so much on this activity, but on the order of activities during the entire "light cycle". If I could do it over again, I'd do it in this order...

1. Kid's love cutting and stripping wire. I know its more of a circut cycle activity, but I'd start with the "homemade flashlights" using holiday lights.
2. Next I'd use the flashlights to constuct "magic lanterns"
3. Moving into l.e.d. programming activities, we'd play the "l.e.d. races" game to teach color programming.
4. Move into the "cricket strobelight game" to teach rhythm and brightness programming capabilities
5. Finally finish with the "nightlight" activity.

The month of May began a whole new cycle, which, due to never attempting any of the activites before, hit a few bumps in the road. So, when reading about the next cycle, look for descriptions of where improvements could be made. After a few strike out days, Gabe and I had an epiphany of how to teach our kids i.r. through a few fun and challenging activities that led us into an extremely successful end of the year. May's cycle I entitled "intro to i.r.". When I blog next, I'll hit on the following points...

May 4th-failed "cup guitar" activity
May 9th-"chirping" display of i.r. at work, and handed out "wave discussion" questaire
May 11th-trip to museum where 8 girls were introduced to i.r. through "wave discussion" questionaire and the first two cricket i.r activities. first they made crickets talk to one another by beeping, even when reflecting in a mirror, or not beep if obstructed. then they made two crickets beep at differant times depending on signals sent from a third cricket.
May 16th-had 8 girls teach a friend the same intro activities for a reward
May 18th-began nasc-i.r. building, fought through some forgotten materials
May 23rd-successful nasc-i.r. construction at museum
May 25th-new contestants built their own nasc-i.r.'s while others put final touches on theirs, and at 5:15pm on "Wednesday! Wednesday! Wednesday!" we began the 2005 nasc-i.r. races at Panther Courtyard Speedway!

Cody has his Telemundo moment

Cody and the interested Starbucks Fans!

Joey prepared for his camera moment

PJ discusses the Cricket and the Motors

Even the Governor's Office is intrigued by Caitlin and Jonathon

More interested visitors captivated by Melanie

Mesmerizing work!

Maggie is showing the working of the Metal Parachute!

Kelsey explaining the finer points of Design IT to interested visitors

ALA update - Radio Shack STORE ONE opening

Friday morning Saafir, Joyce Baker, and Jonathon took 8 of the Design IT students that were involved in the Art Cycle to the Radio Shack STORE ONE opening in downtown Fort Worth. The students were there to show off their Sound Automata to anyone and everyone that came through the door. The kids did an amazing job of explaining the crickets, the sensors, the actual machine building, and the Design IT program. One of them, Cody Bodenmiller, got on camera with Telemundo, and there were many pictures and film taken of this by the parents who came to the event. We will be posting some of the pics here soon. We were able to have information sheets available for the public that described the Design IT programs at the clubs as well as the ALA. (Saafir and I were also talking about working some ideas at the clubs to get some displays made that could go inside STORE ONE before the summer is out.) The kids were able to then go around and play in the store, and they were able to talk about the program during those times as well to anyone who asked them (they were wearing their uniform shirts.) We hope this will be a great beginning to a long relationship between Design IT Studios, The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, and Radio Shack. We look to go back in two weeks with more of the Design IT kids for another event. Pictures of this event will follow!
Jonathon

Weekly Plan: May 16 - May 21

Monday
Panther (Myles and Gabe)
IR Controlled Cars; Day 3
Arts Council Meeting 4-7 (Jonathon & Saafir)

Tuesday
Northside (Saafir)
Build IR Controlled Cars
Make a poster for the script contest
Confirm summer intern list
Waterama event 7-1 (Saafir)
ALA (Jonathon, Karie, and Gabe)
End-of-the-year projects

Wednesday
ALA at the Museum (Jonathon, Myles, and Gabe)
End of the year projects
Watarama Event 7-1 (Jonathon)
Panther at the Museum (Myles and Gabe)
IR Controlled Cars; Day 4
Northside (Saafir)
Race IR Controlled Cars
Send home flyers about girls field trip to the Museum
Mini-workshop on storyboarding and script writing

Thursday

ALA (Jonathon, Karie, and Gabe)
End of the year projects
Northside (Saafir)
A Day in the Park Workshop; Day 1
Collect permission slips for Friday

Friday
Radio Shack opening 8:00-12:00 (Jonathon and Saafir)
Panther (Gabe)
Northside at the Museum (Saafir)
A Day in the Park Workshop; Day 2 (Girls day at the Museum)

Blog This! Mad Scientist Ball

February 26 was not so long ago and the ripples from the Mad Scientists Ball are still spreading through DesignIT.

May 10 - May 13

Choose your own adventure
and LEGO building at Northside

Tuesday
Today I brought out a big tub of Legos to add a new element to the mix. My plan turned out to be too ambitous -- I wanted us to build a couple of the LEGO motion modules off of the PIE ideas webpage so we could use them next week when we started working on an animated park (also from PIE ideas). It turns out that these modules are difficult to build even if you have a model and all of the parts laid out in front of you. Forget about trying to construct them in the hustle and bustle of the teen room with a printout of the plan and a giant box of unsorted LEGOS. Five of the teen boys were game, and we struggled through a few half-built modules. One of them made a giant extendable arm element from the "Reacher" plan, then used it to hit people. Darin ended up with a welt across his back that he proudly showed off.

Jesse and Ant continue to mess around with their skateboarding movie. Jesse is doing some nice artwork on paper that he wants to include in the movie and we talked about firing up the Best Buy scanner that is collecting dust in the corner. Anthony is using some of the footage to make a commercial for a school assignment. These guys are remarkable. They have a bright-eyed plan to move to California and skate their way through college. If will be fun to help them do it.

Wednesday
I noticed on Tuesday that a) the boys like making cars and, b) the girls weren't interested in anything LEGO. I know how much we hated cars last year, but Myles and Gabe have come up with an interesting approach. They use cars as a doorway to programming skills, especially for teaching how to program infrared communication.

I made it to the club later than I had planned and Santiago had already setup the cameras and laptops. I encouraged the boys to continue building cars from LEGO and cardboard. Jaun and Javier started building a low-rider and this started a ripple of excitement about car building.

Meanwhile, I tried to create a setup that would appeal to the girls as much as the guys. I hunted down a pile of stuffed animals, Beanie Babies, and action figures that the club seems to have hundreds of and I borrowed some wire hangers from Mrs. Lupe to use as supports for posing the dolls. Then I invited some of the girls to help me animate them with the Intel Play cameras and a few were interested. I couldn't build on their interest much though because I was helping with the car project, with Ant and Jesse's video stuff, and I had to bounce back to the Museum to talk about the DesignIT commercial.

Thursday

Javier wants to make a fighting game in Microworlds. I showed him the basics and he is picking it up okay, but I really need to spend a few afternoons and take a group of them through a Microworlds class.

We started building cars in earnest today and finished several. I found myself explaining gear ratios and Cricket programming to attentive teenage boys -- they wanted to make their cars GO and I knew some stuff that could help them. Their focus was sharp -- make a car that will beat my friends car, and they used whatever tools were comfortable. The cars were all simple and some of Some of them opted to use a 9V battery connected directly to the motor to make their cars go. I plan to show them why Crickets are a better a solution to running a car.

I got verbal okays for the field trip on Friday.

Friday
I followed Myles' lead with my Friday field trip by limiting the visit to only boys. This wans't terribly difficult becuase the teen who were interested in building the IR cars were mostly guys anyway. I thought I could buy some focus by working with the guys this week and the girls next week on IR related projects...Our goalwas to finish the cars that some of the boys had started working on so they all operated with crickets and would hold together long enough so that I could introduce IR control. I was tired since it had been a tough week and it slowed me down some. I didn't prepare as much as I wanted to and I was put even further behind when I had to go pick the group up myself because of staff problems at the club. It was a decent night.


Jordan showing her friend the basics of stop-motion animation


Jaun and friend making a Cricket powered "low-rider"


Ant and Jesse working on their film


Micheal in LEGO bliss

May 3 - May 5

Lights and Cameras at Northside

I’m at the Northside club from 4:00 until 7:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Each day when I show up, Santiago has already gotten out the laptops and the Intel play cameras and the teens are using them. We’ve planned a field trip to the Museum each Friday but this Friday, they didn’t have enough staff to send over a group. Thursday was the last day in the series this week where I introduced Crickets as a way to power Christmas lights and LEDs, helped the teens on their stop-motion and video projects, and built Magic Lanterns.

Tuesday. Introduced simple circuits and switches. Continued with their interest in stop-motion animation. The teens have been working with clay, Alien and Predator action figures, and other junk they’ve found around the club to make stop motion films using the Intel play cameras. Jesse and his friend have been steadily working on their skateboarding film. Earlier today I went to Best Buy and bought a USB Analog to Digital converter so they could transfer their VHS movies to the laptops. Their learning curve on the Windows Movie Maker software has been shallow. Their prior experience editing with the camera and a VCR transferred easily into the video editing project.

Wednesday. Crickets powering Christmas lights, and LED programming races. Some of the teens (Troy and Michael) continue working with simple circuits and switches. They’ve discovered simple motors in my bin and are hooking them into 9V battery circuits.

Thursday. The flow of my day was interrupted because they had two guest speakers come in and talk to the teens. One woman from TCC talked about options for college and a police officer shared information about careers in law enforcement. I introduced Myles’ light boxes finally but the teenagers were just not interested. I got a few of them to draw pictures of Cartman (from the SouthPark cartoon), low-rider bicycles and faces traced from a package. A few more made another stop-motion film. One older kid, a community service volunteer, got excited when I showed him how to build beats in Soundblaster. He raps and wants to produce his own music. He spent all of Thursday afternoon on my laptop, making beats and freestyling to them.

Darin filming fight


Making Magic Lantern


Downloading Analog video


Stop Motion


Tinkering

ALA new Projects

Ok, the ALA group as a whole, are now working on projects of their choice for the end of the year. Some are working on MicroWorlds projects, some are working on new music with the technology we've used, and actually writing songs to go with the music they are creating, and others are working on a new film idea. I have one group that wants to work on a recruiting film for the Design IT project, and another group that wants to create a student webpage for the Design IT website. We have lost some of our members as they are wanting to spend more time finishing their schoolwork and other extracurricular opportunites. The summer institutes with IBM are shaping up right now, and i have about 20 kids signed up for them. We'll be trying to get more of them involved in the coming weeks.
Next week i will be interviewing about 8 of the students for the summer teaching positions for the museum school project. I have 4 students right now set to go with me to do a community event in two weeks - the WATERAMA event where we will be showing ICE THERAMIN and the electrostatic properties of water.
THe RADIO SHACK opening is on May 20, and 10 kids are set to go to that to talk about the cricket machines they built.
We have some great community exposure coming up, and we've already got a large crop of students interested in starting up with us next year.
I also want to make sure the current eighth graders know that they are invited to come back at the beginning of their school year next year to join us for MINDFEST!

The students will work on their new projects until June 1, and then we will showcase them on June 2.

Jonathon

The end of the school year

We are getting ready to end out the school year with the ALA kids working on a project of their choice. We will be giving them a chance to explore any of the technology we have worked with all year long and be as creative as possible. Tuesday May 3 i will be looking at project proposals so that they can start working on wednesday. The Students are also going to be signing up for our institutes we are running with new engineering friends from IBM. I will be interviewing some of the students next week for a possible position helping us teach our Museum School classes in July. THose classes will be a week on chain reactions and crickets, another week on crickets and sound sculptures, and the last week on MicroWorlds. After tomorrow i will post information about what exact projects the students will attempt. The Art cycle kids are preparing to go to radio shack's STORE ONE on May 20th. they will be talking to people at the opening of the store about their work as well as the Design IT program. May 16th Saafir and i will be showcasing Design IT at the 2005 Arts Council meeting. May 17 and 18 i will be taking some of the ALA students with me to do the WATERAMA event here in Fort Worth, and I'm working on a presentation that will include an explanation of water's electrostatic tendencies and i want to use the ice theramin program with the crickets and MIDI boards to show to the school groups.