Summer Session #1

Hey gang. Wanted to fill you in on my experience with our first summer session where we recruited some of out older, seasoned Design IT veterans into the possibility of joining us for a summer intern here at the museum.

Activity 1: Intro to Internship

Big Idea: Get teens thinking about what a job means to them, get the group socially comfortable with new peers through icebreakers and games, and "Interview" potential interns for this summer's museum school Design IT cycles by seeing how well they work with assigned tasks, such as sorting, building sensors and building motion modules

Dates: Wednesday to Friday, June 8th, 9th and 10th, 10:30am to 2pm

Attendance: Saafir, myself and 10 teens-Lazaro H., Jesse G., Jesus O., Darin R., Chris R., Ruben R., Taylor M., Jasmine J., Tamarra G.

Materials:
Software: Laptop, the digital projector and the pie network website: www.pienetwork.org

Hardware: dry erase board, soldering materials, sensors, wire, LEGOS, the "If" book, rolls of tape

Directions:
Day 1: Started with icebreakers everyday including name-games and questions from the "If" book, which became a favorite activity. Then began a discussion on what the internship would involve as a job, and what jobs meant to these teens. Some questions and answers for the teens included...

Q: Have you ever had a paid job before and if so, what was it?
A: mowing lawns
A: painting houses
A: babysitting

Q: What does an employer expect of an employee?
A: On time
A: In uniform
A: Work hard
A: Good attitude

Q: What does an employee expect of an employer?
A: Money
A: Good instructions
A: Fair treatment

Q: What do you see as your career when you are older?
A: Football player
A: Actress
A: Military
A: Teacher
A: Lawyer

Q: Why do people get jobs?
A: Money
A: Learn a skill
A: Do what they enjoy for money
A: A stepping stone to another job

Q: What is the difference between a job and a career?
A: A job you do to get into a career.
A: Career you do for a long time.

Day 2: Worked on soldering together light sensors for next weeks activity and sorted materials. Those who already knew how to solder were asked to teach those who did not, emphasizing the safety concepts.
Day 3: Sorted, soldered, and built examples of 6 different LEGO motion modules (at least one of each) from the pienetwork website for the following week. We also played a game called "tape-tag" to cool down after lunch. Its like freeze-tag, but you have to keep a roll of tape on your head so everyone travels really slowly.

Skills: group cooperation, social interaction, soldering and constructing skills, and worked on staying on task.

Best Part: The kids getting to know one another through various activities and successes.

Worst Part: Getting the kids to the museum on time.

Improvements: We need to foreshadow cycles like this and get travel arrangements put together better ahead of time.

Overall, we had a successful few days. I feel like the teens left with a better idea of what to expect from our job opportunity and from others in the future, and we definitely got to know our potential interns on a deeper level outside the club. We'll talk soon.

NASC-I.R. RACES!

Hey gang. Finishin' up the blogging for the school year with our last activity. Here goes...

Activity 1: NASC-I.R. races

Big Idea: Educating kids on how to program I.R. programs while making the activity fun with a competive finish.

Dates: Monday, May 23rd and two Wednesdays, May 18th and 25th

Groups Participating: panther boys and girls club kids

Attendance: 12 kids and Gabe and I

Materials:
Software: laptops, transfer cables, transfer crickets, 2 crickets at each laptop

Hardware: motors, motor cables, various legos including motor attachments, different sized gears, spokes, wheels, and standard building pieces, zip ties

Directions: First have the kids program their crickets. Its the same program as activity two of "intro to I.R." with a few modifications. Here's a quick review with the changes. Program "remote" cricket to send a random value between 1 and 250 every second. For the races themselves you'll only need two of these remote crickets.
Next each kid should have a "reciever" cricket with a motor attached. The program should read that motor A will run for 1/3 of a second when that particular car's values are sent. Now, in order for the races to be fair and each race have a different winner, each car should be programmed at different values, therefore all cars will travel at diffent times. For example, car 1 will be programmed to travel only when the values of 1 to 40 are sent, and car 2 will only travel only when values 41 to 80 are sent, and so on until 250, which will provide enouph values for 6 cars to race. Since the remote cricket is sending random numbers every second, it'll be random who wins the race.
Next the fun part for most- designing and building their race cars. This can be accomplished a number of ways, so let the kid's be creative. The most popular way was though a basic two-gear system where the motor spun one gear which spun another that was attached to the wheel spoke. Also, use zip ties to secure crickets onto the cars, and to secure motors that want to jump off.
Finally, the race. We went outside to the concrete and laid down two 15 foot poles for our racing lanes. We raced two cars at a time, each car with thier own remote cricket pointed towards it. Its important the person holding the remote cricket stay near the car for it to continue racing, or, to the dismay of the opponent, sometimes if the signal is lost, the motor will run continuously. When that happened we simply started over.

Skills: I.R. programming, understanding how I.R. waves are sent and how they can be used to create, designing and building skills, and learning how gears and motors work together to propel

Associated Concepts: confidence in programming, some worked in pairs promoting teamwork, self accomplishment when car finally runs and races, fun competive atmosphere on day of racing

Best Part: Seein a kid figure out the gear system and watch their car run for the first time. Also, of corse, the races themselves.

Worst Part: Getting the older kids interested in "baby toys" such as legos was tough. However, Gabe and I just started building ourselves, and when we had a few cars running, kids came over in droves. Also, occasionally a car would all apart, but that only made the kids more determined to design it better the next time.

Culminating Event: "2005 Nasc-I.R. races" at Panther Courtyard Speedway! Before the races began, and for the last day of building, we had pizza in the teen room for teens only. This led to us having seven cars participate and a few kids join up who had not yet participated. Also, at least 20 kids came to watch the races and cheer on thier favorite cars, and we had some parents watch as well.

Improvements: If I had more time on race day, I would have made a bigger deal out of it all, with tickets and popcorn for those who attend. Also, I'd have the kids announce the names of their cars everytime they race, and have the audience cheer for who they thought would win. Like, "Cheer if you think 'Bohemoth' will beat 'Gargantuon'! Now whoever thinks 'Gargantuon' will win, lemme hear ya! Louder!" Next time.

So that about sums it up. We had a blast this year. The new kids were great, and I'm lookin forward to when all the younger kids who keep askin, "Am I old enough yet?" can join. I'm also pumped for summer institutes comin up. Until then, see ya soon.


marcus building his hummer

curiosity

busted


fixin it together


teamwork

on your marks...get set...

Intro to I.R.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. This was quite an accurate description for the month of May for DesignIT at Panther and our last cycle of the school year. And although we almost got eaten from frustration the first few activities, things smoothed out and finished with a fun and memeorable last day at the club of our 04'-05' school year. Here's the laydown of our last cycle entitled "intro to I.R."...

Coming back from a day of illness, on May 4th I referred back to our "pie ideas" website and put together an activity a few of the kids wanted to try entitled "cup guitars". I'm not going to spend much time on this story, but simply ask that you, the reader, learn from my mistakes. Simply put, I gathered and bought all the right supplies just in time to leave for the club before being able to attempt the activity myself. The afternoon looked promising, and the kids (about 6 of them), Gabe and I all followed step by step instructions together to build our inventions, which I'm afraid they didn't work. So we taught the kids a little about trouble-shooting and problem solving, but alas, they still did not work. So ended up taking apart 0.99$ earphones the rest of the time, which actually was not a bad substitute activity, but we did lose a few that were interested earlier than I'd anticipated. So a simple lesson, attempt the activity yourself before teaching it.

On Monday Saafir and I decided it was time for us and the kids to finally unvail the I.R. (infa-red) technology our little cricket friends possess. But since I would be at the club that day, we decided it would be best to wow them with a neat I.R. trick, then bring them to the museum to teach the actual programming. The program Saafir came up with was quite a complicated one where a group of ten crickets facing eachother beeped a certain random pitch with a value between 1 and 250 every second. Then, as they beeped, they were able read the crickets next to them, and lower or raise thier own pitch until all ten were on beeping the same note in unison. This made them truely sound like crickets, the insects, and truely memorizing.
Because the crickets had displays on them, we eventually created a game where we closed our eyes and tried to guess the moment all the crickets chirped in unison. When someone predicted it, we opened our eyes to check the numbers on the displays to see if they were right. Kind of an ear-training excersize of sorts. If attempting this game, it may work better to program the crickets to beep less frequently, like say every 5 seconds in stead of 1.

While kids played, Gabe and I brainstormed together about how we could take this complex program down to a teachable activity or two to get the kids started. That day we had a couple epiphanies on how to do so, and these ideas and thier results will be desribed below under the activity "Intro to I.R.".

After we played the game, and before the kids could wander off, I handed out a "talking cricket questionaire" for each teen to fill out. As incentive, I warned them that this was thier ticket for the van if they wanted to attend our museum field trip on Wednesday. It worked, and the answers I got from the questions ranged from accurate to hysterical. Some examples...

Q: How do you think crickets, the insects, talk to one another?
A: Chirping
A: With their legs
A: Yes

Q: How do you think our crickets, the machines, talk to one another?
A: The computer
A: With the lights
A: With the wires

Q: What is a wave?
A: ?
A: (drawing of a squiggly line)

Q: Name 5 differant kinds of waves...
A: Sound
A: Radio
A: Ocean
A: Phone
A: Hello and Goodbye

Q: What do you think the "I.R." in "I.R. waves" stands for?
A: Inter Radio?
A: I Ron't know.

So, with questionaires answered, and curiousity sparked, on Wednesday, May 11th, eight girls from Panther hopped in the van to head to the museum. When they arrived I had a long table set up with enough computers for groups of two to share and the digital projector showing a program from my computer. Before we opened the computers, we went over the answer of the "talking cricket questionaire". To keep them focused, I called on one of them to read a question, and she, the reader, got to choose who would answer. If they answered it right, they read next, and so on.

After the discussion, we moved onto our first I.R. session...

Activity 1: "Intro to I.R."

Big Idea: Educating kids on how to program I.R. programs.

Dates:Wednesday, May 11th

Groups Participating: panther boys and girls club kids

Attendance: 8 kids and Gabe and I

Materials:
Software: laptops, transfer cables, transfer crickets, 3 crickets at each laptop
Hardware: hand held mirrors

Directions: Two activities.
Activity one: Through basic I.R. program displayed by the digital projector, have the kids program one of thier crickets to be "remote" and program the other cricket to be "reciever", where the program has the remote send a "beep" command to the reciever every second. Then have the kids block the signal between the remote and the reciever with objects, themselves, and test the farthest distance that they can read eachother. Also introduce mirrors and have them experiment with reflection.
Activity two: Have the kids reprogram "remote" cricket to send a random value between 1 and 250 every second. Next program one "reciever" cricket to only beep when the sent values of 1 to 125 are sent, and a second reciever cricket to only beep the sent values of 126 and 250 are sent. Have the kids notice they never beep at the same time.

Skills: I.R. programming, understanding how I.R. waves are sent and work, understanding of how the crickets communicate

Associated Concepts: confidence in programming, working in pairs premotes cooperation

Best Part: Success when beepin begins. Also, we may want to consider some activities be divided occasionally by the sexes. It was extremely progressive that day, and that may have something to do with it.

Worst Part: Goin home! We made great progress that day.

Culminating Event: (leads to)2005 Nasc-I.R. races at Panther Courtyard Speedway

Improvements: Have ALL designIT kids check out these intro excersizes cause they work!

The following Monday, May 16th, these 8 girls, armed with the of knowing how to program I.R., had the opportunity to win a candy bar if they recruited someone who was not present on the previous Wednesday and tought that one person what we learned without touching the keyboard. We had the digital projector going for guidence again, and I gave away 10 candy bars that day, so 5 more learned the basics. Not too shabby.

I gotta go to work, so next time I'll finish up our last three sessions, with the building and programming of our nasc-I.R.'s, and the big race. And finally I'll get some photos and films posted as well.

Myles Hayes