Technology Elective

There are some days where it just seems that everything falls into place. I have 15 students in the tech elective this term which is a dramatic increase over the typical 5 or less. I only have 8 Arduino kits, 3 Raspberry Pi kits and 18 computers. I thought that it might be best if I had students choose what they wanted to work on. I figured that the Pi's are too hard to set up and I didn't think I could manage them along with the Arduinos so I told the students they could choose Arduino or Codeacademy. Fortunately exactly 8 wanted to work on the Arduinos and the rest chose Codeacademy.

I wanted to do a better job teaching the students about the circuits than I did last term. I spent one period explaining how to connect to the breadboard and about short circuits which was a bit dry but it did the trick. The next few days they tinkered using the links I gave them on the Google doc. I decided that the next class I would force them to choose a project and direction.

This is the point of todays Blog. They chose a project (either solo or in a team) and moved forward. They were far more focused and each person had a goal. I guess this seems obvious but it just worked out better that I expected. One group decided that they would make an air powered car/boat using the arduino to control motor speed and print the propeller with the 3D printer. Awesome, except the printer needs to be fixed - oh well that will happen soon. The group of 3 quickly set out using cardboard, tape , scissors and some other random items I happened to have in a box that I think the art department was throwing away. The creativity was amazing and I have to think that I was beginning to figure out what a maker space might look like. We will see how things turn out but it is a good start. Below are a few pictures of the work.