mh back again.

Hey gang. Hope everyone had a great summer and is having a pleasant fall. I know Panther is. Now to fill you in on what we've been up to out there. October was spent captivating the old and recruiting the new, which has been a success on both accounts. Since most of the activities we did that month were old favorites that we already have blogged the intimate details on, I will instead summerize briefly by date, the activity, its attendance, and successes or challenges presented...

Monday, October 10 - Dropped by the club for the first time since July and had a warm reception. I met Ms. Adrian, the new club director, who is very cool and will be very helpful and with any of our needs. Chit-chatted with Ms. Mays and Gabe, and hung out in the teen room for a spell to catch-up with the older teens from years previous. It seemed the turn-over of sixth-grade to seventh-grade club members was reletively small, so gaining new participants posed a challenge. Before I left I made sure to hand-out fliers announcing our first informational meeting for all panther teens seventh-grade and up (snacks included was a huge recruitment factor).

Wednesday, October 13 - Had a successful turnout for our first meeting of Panther's DesignIT crew of the 2005-06 school year. Those in attendance included...

Micheal Adams
Tikiah Harris
Deimetra Simmons
Leanthia Jenkins
Braela Reed
Myene Lewis
Jonathon Ramirez
Marcus Mitchell

At the meeting we covered the following...
-our new sign-in system which didn't catch-on right away, but now is in full swing
-how to sign up hourly participation, and the goal of 12 hours to become an enrolled member
-benefits to becoming a member, including a free family museum membership, a DesignIT t-shirt, museum and other location fieldtrips, the possibility of winning an i-pod at the end of the year, and the possibilty of a paid summer internship at the museum
-expectations when becoming a member including completing at least 4 projects displaying various IT skills and are worthy of being displayed for the public
-the scheduale of days and times we would start, consisting of mondays and wednesdays from 5pm to 7pm, being closed studio to teach activities from 5pm to 5:30pm, and fridays being open studio 5pm to 7pm
-the upcoming 2005 "Mindfest" on the weekend of october 21st and thier appreciated participation

With Mindfest fast approaching the following week, I printed up a list and description of every activity that would be there. After reading through each carefully together, we took a vote on which the group would like to focus on in order to become skilled enough to teach to the public at Mindfest. The majority of the group voted for sound sculptures, which the previous year they had not had time to try due lack of access to the power tools. Luckily, that also happened to be the activity I would be leading, so it was a great review for me as well. After snacks and a brief intro to this years exciting potential activities for thier DesignIT studio at Panther, we concluded our first meeting.

Panther Mindfest Cycle - Sound Sculptures

dates: Monday, October 17 and Wednesday, October 19

big idea: By building sculptures that make noise through movement when light meets thier light sensors, the activity re-introduces cricket programming to older teens and introduces programming to new teens in a fun, attractive, non-threatening, but challenging activity. The sound sculpture project also provides challenges in problem solving through building where a reletively instant product encourages new students through quick success.

attendance: Fairly good attendence, and interestingly was seperated by the sexes totally unintentionally. I've noticed this usually ends up in more focused groups.
Monday - the gals...Leanthia, Braela, and Mylene
Wednesday - the boys...Michale, Jonathon, and Marcus

supplies: laptops, crickets, transfer crickets, motors, motors cables, motor connectors, light sensors, random craft/noise making supplies for building, hot glue guns, (because of no power tools) halfway built/incomplete sound sculptures.

best part: Successfully finishing one with each group. In fact, the one the ladies built ended up being displayed at Mindfest

hardest part: Attendence at Mindfest. This was disappointing because they became so familar with the activity so quickly. I learned quickly that parent notification is the only way to get attendence to weekend activities.

The next couple weeks with Panther enjoyed stable attendence and some creative projects. We also got to meet some of the parents at our parent pizza party night and display achievements past and present of our teens. Finally, the last week was spent begining our animation cycle with a new favorite activity, "light painting". All of this will be blogged in detail soon with many photos to view. Look forward to getting our progress and creations recorded here for all to see. Take care.
myles