Recruiting Girls at ALA

What a great morning of high energy and excitement at the ALA!! The girls were a lot of fun, and we hope to see many of them in the program!

Reason: To encourage and inform more girls to participate in the new DesignIT year.

Date: September 30, 2005

Attendance: Sammie, Crystal, Joyce, Caroline, Chelsey, Lauren and about 30 new girls!!

Supplies: Melon harp stuff , Kinetic sculputres, chain reactions, doughnuts, orange juice, napkins, cups

Game Plan: We wanted it to be a laid back and relaxed atmosphere so that the girls would not be intimidated by all the new technology and ideas presented. So...we started out by feeding them. Who doesn't love a sweet doughy delight during their first period?!! :) After all the girls had a chance to sit down, eat, and chat, Sammie and I began our presentation. First, Sammie went over the logistics of how DesignIT works. She covered things like the commitments a student has to the program, the weekly working hours, and the dress code . She also invited them all to participate at Mindfest. Second, Crystal discussed the benefits and perks students receive while participating in the program such as museum memberships, portfoilio development, possible museum jobs and fun feild trips. Next, Joyce attested to our speaches and added in her own testimonies. :) Finally, Caroline, Lauren, and Chelsey each took a cycle and demonstrated a project they had completed. For example, Lauren showed the girls a kinetic sculputre and spoke about how to program crickets. To end the event, all the girls were allowed to ask questions, pick up forms, and play with the gadgets.

Best Part: Seeing the energetic response to the examples we brought. The girls loved LOVED the melon harp!! Chelsey, Caroline, and lauren were rock stars!! they did a great job exhibiting their creations.

Hardest Part: Not loosing their interest while discussing all the logistics part.

Chain Reaction Debrief Details - Sept. 21

We sat down with the Design IT students from ALA after we ran the Chain Reaction Activity on the museum floor and asked them to talk about what things they saw that worked really well and what they saw about the activity that we could improve. Here is the list of their comments:
1. There were a large number of people involved - this was a plus!!
2. There were many different kinds of people involved - another plus.
3. Some people used more than just the materials they were given or told about - they made use of their surroundings - we loved this!
4. The dynamic of using new materials with the visitors excited the students.
5. Some people were shy, others were more outspoken - the kids had to change their approaches to different people.
6. Some of the students found that just being available and waiting for questions to be asked of them was very effective.
7. The students remarked that they were seen and treated by some of the visitors as experts.
8. They all understood and remarked that open communication between themselves, the visitors, and each other was necessary for success.
9. The students saw that with some people they needed to give some advice on what might be possible and others did not need prodding.
10. The majority of the visitors in the space were older kids (high school) so they seemed to work really well together as teams of people.
11. The playfulness of the students and the facilitators (some of our new facilitators participated as builders) was an open door for new communication,
12. The extreme creativity was staggering!!
13. Some of the students really worked well with people in their immediate area.

Some of the things mentioned that needed some improvement:
1. There needed to be more space.
2. Needed more crowd control.
3. More supplies?
4. There needed to be one set facilitator of the activities.
5. (the visitors in questioned were made to leave after only one challenge time) More time with visitors was requested.
6. There were some communication barriers, as some of us do not speak spanish and some of our visitors only spoke Spanish (Eddie was a Godsend here to help get people interested and motivated!)

All of these ideas will be taken into account as the final activity takes shape for the Mindfest weekend event itself.

Jonathon

Working Wednesday - Sept. 21, ALA

The two days leading up to this event, as well as the wek previous, the students had been working on an activity that they have all done before. They worked on creating an interesting chain reaction out of familiar materials (see Saafir's entry about materials.) We created some specific spaces for them to work within so they could get used to what the space was going to be when we got on the museum floor. Each student was given a square about 3 feet by 4 feet to work in while we practiced at the ALA, and the squares taped off on the museum floor were about 4x4. We ran numerous challenges with them using different materials to give them some reminder experience on having limitations on time and the materials themselves because of the mindfest constraints of the same. They were instructed to create within their own square something out of very few materials, and then find ways to connect it with the next person's creation. There are pictures of this taking place within this blog (see below.)
The next day (Tuesday the 20th) the students were encouraged to create their own challenges for each other in an attempt to give them some quick experience on how to come up with ways to include visitors quickly in the activity. We had them write down their ideas and then i picked a few out of a hat for us to try. The group was completely engaged the entire time, and I couldn't wait for wednesday to come so we could try this on the floor.

MUSEUM DAY - SEPT. 21

The area in the hands on science room in the back was set aside for the chain reaction activity from 10:45 - 12:45 on wednesday. There were 8 squares taped off with arrows on the floor indicating the direction of the giant chain reaction to be created. [ Side note - this particular activity taking place during mindfest will give a wonderful creative outlet for many visitors - it will serve as a constantly fluxuating piece of moving art that also happens to incorporate ideas from physics and engineering as well!!] The students were given the floor space with different materials to use (K'nex, Wood Block Dominoes, balloons, tape, tape rolls, string) and the instruction of the day to them was to find a way to encourage visitors to not only come and create a chain reaction with them, but to eventually create something that would connect with the person's square next to theirs. One long chain reaction was the ultimate goal for the activity, with goals of engaging visitors with new ideas and giving them an interesting and educational experience also a part of the day. Many of the students did a great job building and interacting with people during the allotted time - Wesley, Lauren, and Eddie being standouts becuase of how Lauren interacted one on one with some of the smaller children, Wesley and eddie because of their attempts and abilities to work with larger groups of people all at one time. Joey and David and Leland all had some great creations that some visitors helped them build, and when the challenge time was up we had a room full of people waiting anxiously to see what would happen!! (that was incredible to see so many people there just having so much fun!!) When the chain was set off, there were problems with the final run, but the construction was such a success! The students did a great job of helping the public out with this activity and then we had a debriefing time afterwards. The details of the debrief are posted in a separate entry.

ALA Mindfest Cycle: Stop-Motion Animation Day 2

We did stop-motion animation with students today for the second time this week. This is how the sky looked at 7:50am this morning when Marcus and I took some photos.



activity/cycle title: Mindfest Cycle: Stop Motion Animation
dates: friday, september 23rd
big idea: create short stop-motion films that communicate an emotion to practice using the software and cameras in preparation for next Wednesday
attendance:5 students (Crystal, Sammie, and Saafir)
hardware: laptops, Intel Play cameras
software: Intel Play software
other materials: clay (Play-Dough)
associated skills: stop motion animation, setting up a laptop and camera, planning a short film
associated concepts: ?
best part:the emotions that I picked. I've been reading "The Resilience Factor" by Karen Reivich and Andre Shatte from the University of Pennsylvania and it had a compelling summary of the negative emotions and their adaptive function. (Anger signals trespass, etc.) I had the students try communicating one of the five basic negative emotions with the clay and cameras. (Sadness, Anger, Embarassment, Anxiety/Fear, and Guilt) I know this isn't a cheery way to start your day but it was fun nevertheless.
hardest part: there really wasn't enough time to finish one of the films.
culminating event: we'll continue this kind of work through Tuesday

ALA Working Wednesday: On the Floor at The Museum

Attendance: 8 students
Staff: Jonathon, Crystal, Sammie, and Saafir
Date & Time: 10:45-12:45 on Wednesday, September 21

Overview:

Part 1

Part 2

ALA: Week 2

Plan for ALA Recruitment Visit

Big Idea
Talk to three of the science teacher’s classes about designIT

Materials and Set-up
4 Sound automata with light sensors (automata, lamps for spot-lighting them, blue LED flashlights, maglights)
1 Melon Harp set-up
3 Laptops
1 Digital projector for photo slideshow
60 Handouts

Plan
Play around with the digital art exhibits
Talk to the group for a half-hour about the program
Take lots of photos

ALA Mindfest Cycle: Chain Reactions Week

I'm writing this entry three days later so I'll probably miss some details. I was excited to start the year back with the ALA crew. The focus of our work this week is chain reactions on the museum floor.

activity/cycle title: Mindfest Cycle: Chain Reactions
dates: monday, september 12th - wednesday, september 16
big idea: help the teens learn about working with visitors and planning activities through chain reactions on the museum floor
attendance:8 on Monday, 9 on Tuesday, 9 on Wednesday (Crystal, Sammie, Gabe, and Saafir all worked with ALA this week)
hardware: laptops, crickets, alligator clips, simple switches built from cardboard, aluminum tape, and foil
software: logoblocks
other materials: wooden blocks, masking tape for marking work areas on the carpet
associated skills: programming crickets to run a motor when a switch is closed, and gathering materials to use on the museum floor, planning, building simple switches, soldering, creating signs for the Museum floor, talking to visitors about DesignIT, helping visitors build chain reactions
associated concepts: simple circuits with switches, building a reliable switch,
best part: the relaxed feel of the morning sessions. An hour is a short chunk of time and the students seem to enjoy working during that time. It's nice to be finished working with the students early in the day. It was great to clean the studio thoroughly and Crystal, Sammie, and I all wore black on Wednesday.
hardest part: the Wednesday didn't work the way I planned. We never made it to the floor becasue the preparation took so much time. Next time, I will have to budget our time better and plan to spend most of the Wednesday out in the galleries.
culminating event: we will do several trail runs with visitors, and the final run of the activity during Mindfest.
some notes: I have two more days in the week so I can regain some lost ground. While Monday and Tuesday went really well, Wednesday was a minor disaster. We started out the day talking about the Mindfest cycle schedule. Then we brainstormed a list of materials and approaches to use on the floor with chain reactions. Finally, we divided the nine students into teams of three and assigned them to collect the stuff they would need to work on the floor. By the time we had collected materials and programmed Crickets to run the automata components, we had run clean out of time. A couple of the teens were restless and onery that day and I wasn't in a great mood myself. Oh well :-(

I'll blog more of this in an audioblog entry.

Skill Tags Idea: First Draft

The Big Idea:

Give teens and staff a tangible set of goals through fluency models. The tags will represent fluency models that live in a notebook, as posters on the studio walls, on laptop hard drives, on the DesignIT blog, and in the teens’ file. We would build incentives into the program based on the tags. For example, when a teen earns a dozen tags she would become eligible to win a cool tech gadget. Each cycle would give the teens who sign up for it a chance to earn a specific set of tags. The only requirement for earning a tag is that the teen produce a project that demonstrates her mastery of the skills and concepts on the tag. The teen can earn tags for projects built at any time during the DesignIT year.

One Approach:
Tags as large projects that build in specific skills. Each tag includes several model projects at different levels of sophistication and outlines the main features of each.

1. Sound automata, marble mazes (Projects that include wood-working, sensors and Cricket basics)


2. Singing water fountain (MIDI programming and sensor building)


3. “Pipey the Pipe Cleaner” or “Help We Shrunk Ourselves!” (Stop-motion animation and storyboarding)


4. The DesignIT blog (documentation and journal writing)


5. The Merry Christmas box (Basic circuits)


6. Dancing cars or “week in the park” display (IR communication)

Another Approach:

lots of specific skill-based tags
Power tools
Woodworking
Logoblocks programming
MIDI programming
Scratch animation
Sensor building
Basic circuits
Word processing
Blogging and journaling
Sketching
Electronics