Make-a-Monster @ North Reading Middle School

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!

Up and Running!

Hi everybody!

Welcome to our humble little blog!

Even though it’s April 1st, we are not fooling around.  We met as a group for the first time last week and this week, we’ve been scrambling madly to get the pieces together for our first pilot launch this Thursday!  While Xu pulled together supplies, Fawn spent a few hours at MIT making the prototype for our special project and writing up the curriculum.

Fawn and Junia brainstorming at 12:30am.

“What project?” you ask?  Well, stay tuned to find out! Our very own Ayelet will be accompanying us on Thursday morning to document the process via video and I’ll be your on-the-ground blogger!

We hope you’ll be as excited as we are in pulling together the odds and ends for Project makeAnything. It will definitely be a whirlwind for the next couple weeks, but have no fear, we’ll also be explaining the what’s, how’s, and why’s over the next few weeks as well!  Hope you’re as intrigued as I was when I first heard of this!

-Junia