Last Thursday, we had our first demo at North Reading Middle School. We jokingly called it a “Drive-By Demo” because we literally drove to the school, stopped for a Dunkin breakfast, signed in, did the lesson, and drove back with 4 minutes to spare on the Zipcar reservation.
A glimpse of the classroom, the robots, and the teacher.
We were only able to do the demo for one of the classes, which is sad, but hopefully we can come back in the future and share a different project with the other students. The teacher explained how the 7th graders were envious of the 8th graders who were able to play with Lego Mindstorm, and we were glad to give one of the classes a chance to do a hands-on project.
Brainstorming the night before. (L-R: Xu, Fawn, Ayelet, Anna)
The night before, as we were going through a demo of the lesson, we wanted to save time by eliminating sewing. We did this through the design of the product and also substituting sewing with taping down the threads. Sewing would probably be better suited for personal craft kits or take-home projects.
During our prep session, our group also had the tough task of figuring out what exactly the purpose of the lesson was. How specifically were we going to go into circuits and batteries? Did we need to explain what an LED light was? What technical vocabulary was necessary and what wasn’t? How much repetition? These questions are questions that come up for any teaching lesson, and it’s tough. We wanted to provide enough time to scaffold the learning but we also only had 50 minutes! Continue reading
Project makeAnything 