Difference between revisions of "March 2011 Hackerspace Challenge"

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Jeff C: is there any physical fab/ construction I need to be doing in the short term? It doesn't look like it needs much beyond what Peter R did, except for a casing. And that comes later.
  
  

Revision as of 00:42, 7 April 2011

Draft letter to Mitch Altman

  • See [1] for guidelines
  • Due 8PM EST 3/11/2011

Challenges in elementary education

Contents

Project Focus

Currently, we're focusing on three projects.

  • "Player Piano Pen": pen or car with LEDs and light sensors, reads and plays notes as it's rolled along a musical score
  • bouncy ball that uses accelerometers and LEDs to teach kids about force and motion.
  • Blocks: communicate w/ eachother to teach sets, arithmetic, etc

The Project Team

People who are definitely in:

  • Alan Dipert (1-2 hours a week + a marathon: C programming, miscellany, CAD (sketchup and rhino)
  • JC Sackett (2 hours a week + a marathon: arduino programming, software development (python, lua, ruby))
  • Justis Peters (5 hours a week: project management, software development, and Arduino)
  • Skippy Hope (2-3 hours a week + a marathon: C, perl, some Arduino, degree in music, has taught private lessons)
  • Jeff Crews (2 hours a week until later: fabrication, CAD)
  • Peter Reintjes (8 hours a week: electronics and PIC microcontrollers, schematics)
  • Mike Broome (3-4 hours a week (no weekends): programming (C, perl, java), low-level chip stuff, electronics, minor fabrication)
  • Dino Segovis (3 hours a week: hardware, electronics, 555 timers, fabrication, electronics CAD (FreePCB))
  • Darren Boss (4-5 hours a week + a marathon: perl, ruby, java, photography)
  • Ashley -- I'm in. 1-2 hours week, lots of experience in classrooms and how to keep things "educator friendly" :) I'm interested in using this somehow: http://www.modk.it/ w/ our microcontroller integration so that even educators w/ no programming experience could "program" the project. I promise to be at the next meeting :)

Here are the breakout groups:

floaters

  • Kristin Bedell
  • Peter Reintjes
  • Jeff Crews

numeric blocks

  • JC Sackett
  • Ashley

bouncy ball

  • Mike
  • Tom Billman

Justis, Jeff, and Mike will meet at 17:15 on IRC

Jeff C: I will pursue a large hollow Kong ball, split and then held together with a large O ring for security vs. ease of removal for service/programming. I'll build some kind of simple light board to work out the kinks of putting it in the ball and running lights to the outside (probably holes filled with translucent silicone caulk to secure the LEDs).

The large (softball size) Kong balls are hollow but very thick-walled rubber and very bouncy. May need to pot the electronics with 2 part casting urethane or similar. I want to keep it simple and replicable and cheap. I think the Kong will work for this.

it looks like large Orings might be a McMaster item but for now we can use a big rubber band.

player piano

  • Darren
  • Skippy
  • Alan

Jeff C: is there any physical fab/ construction I need to be doing in the short term? It doesn't look like it needs much beyond what Peter R did, except for a casing. And that comes later.


People we need to chase down as potential team members:

  • Tom Karches (audio synthesizers, electronics, circuit bending, old electronics)
  • Tom Billman
  • Bill Farrow
  • Dirk and Sarah

People we need to chase down as potential project advisors:

  • Kristin Bedell
  • Maria Droujkova
  • Greg Dekoeningsberg
  • Paul Overton
  • Robin Mays
  • Emily Mays
  • Michael Stewart

Lenore will take pictures.

The Project Team

People who are definitely in:

  • Alan Dipert (1-2 hours a week + a marathon: C programming, miscellany, CAD (sketchup and rhino)
  • JC Sackett (2 hours a week + a marathon: writing, software development (python, some lua, some ruby), some arduino programming
  • Justis Peters (5 hours a week: project management, software development, and Arduino)
  • Skippy Hope (2-3 hours a week + a marathon: C, perl, some Arduino, degree in music, has taught private lessons)
  • Jeff Crews (2 hours a week until later: fabrication, CAD)
  • Peter Reintjes (8 hours a week: electronics and PIC microcontrollers, schematics)
  • Mike Broome (3-4 hours a week (no weekends): programming (C, perl, java), low-level chip stuff, electronics, minor fabrication)
  • Dino Segovis (3 hours a week: hardware, electronics, 555 timers, fabrication, electronics CAD (FreePCB))
  • Darren Boss (4-5 hours a week + a marathon: perl, ruby, java, photography)
  • Ashley -- I'm in. 1-2 hours week, lots of experience in classrooms and how to keep things "educator friendly" :) I'm interested in using this somehow: http://www.modk.it/ w/ our microcontroller integration so that even educators w/ no programming experience could "program" the project. I promise to be at the next meeting :)

People we need to chase down as potential team members:

  • Tom Karches (audio synthesizers, electronics, circuit bending, old electronics)
  • Tom Billman
  • Bill Farrow
  • Dirk and Sarah

People we need to chase down as potential project advisors:

  • Kristin Bedell
  • Maria Droujkova
  • Greg Dekoeningsberg
  • Paul Overton
  • Robin Mays
  • Emily Mays
  • Michael Stewart

Lenore will take pictures.

Dream ideas from teachers in the field

  • A device that helps ELL students understand syllabication in English (e.g., you say a word and a light flashes to represent the number of syllables)
  • Digital Divide conquering: a way to provide low-cost connectivity to students who lack connectivity in the home/some sort of inexpensive handheld device that students could transport between home and school that would enable students to continue working on their projects outside of school hours
  • A device that could attach to a SmartPhone, scan a word in text, pronounce the word and use the web to bring up an image of the word to illustrate meaning
  • Fraction blocks that can wirelessly communicate and work for adding unlike denominators/finding equivalencies.