Connected Classroom - Google

Yesterday I went to the New York Hall of Science to watch a few chemistry experiments. I didn't actually go but rather I sat at my computer and watched as a live demonstration was given via the Connected Classroom. Yet another tool that Google has designed to help teachers and of later take over the world :). This is the first of many of these trips I hope to take and which I also hope to share with all the incredible teachers we have here at Harbor Day School.

Electrical issues

The students have really done a good job connecting the relays to the various LEDs via the breadboard. We are now working to connect some LED lights that I ordered online. The first mistake was ordering plug in LEDs that require 110V AC power. I decided that ordering the nice battery powered lights was the best idea.  Unfortunately most of the lights have a controller with 3 or 4 wires which allows them to blink in various patterns.  We have spent 2 full class periods finding out how to get the lights to turn on using the relays and power supplies. We found that one of the LED strips needs 25 volts to operate and because it has 3 wires we had to find out how to get the various sections to light as a function of the wires that were powered.
We finally have some lights working with regularity and are now going to program them. The kids are doing well but I think it's time to define some tasks and set some goals - enough tinkering.

Grit

As we work to have students learn about perseverance our school has made an effort to have students not give up easily when they do not understand something. The programming and assembly required for this Raspberry Pi project certainly makes student work. An example is the student who work tirelessly to get his LED blinking. He had little trouble setting up the Raspberry Pi, loading the OS and connecting the peripherals but when it came to connecting the LED it was not as easy (this was true for everyone).
   There are essentially two components to this connection. 1) you need to write a Python program to control the GPIO ports on the Pi and 2) you need to properly connect the GPIO pins to the breadboard and LED.

He entered the program into the Python shell and connected the Pi to the breadboard. When he ran the program nothing happened - no blinking just lighting. He reviewed the program, he watched the video on how to connect it, he asked me for help and I suggested that the rewrite the program. Still, it did not work. We looked at the connections and it looked correct - well it wasn't. It took three class periods to figure it out but he was successful. I was impressed by his effort and he was excited about his success.  It seems obvious that problems like this and the other typical programming problems allow for repeated failure followed by success thereby demonstrating that sometimes you have to work hard, fail, repeat -- to succeed.