March 2011 Hackerspace Challenge

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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

player piano

  • Darren
  • Skippy
  • Alan


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.