Our Brains and Podcasts

Each week, I enjoy listening to a podcast from the Freakonomics.com website.  Freakonomics had a podcast from October about the neuroscience behind your brain when you listen to podcasts.  I went back and re-listened to this podcast for the November/December challenge our tech team at school is doing.

I'll throw out the gist of the podcast, we should be listening to more podcasts!  This is also an area of improvement that I would like to focus on this year, find more educational podcasts to listen to on a weekly basis to expand my knowledge as an educator and continue my own education.  Podcasts are a great way to get a lot of information in a relatively short period of time, and do it in a way in which our brains think we are listening to a story being told. Now, the story teller (podcaster) needs to be good at what they do, a monotone, uninspired podcaster will not do much to stimulate my senses, while a charismatic, interesting and involved podcaster will get me to buy into the story, both emotionally and mentally.

Our brains enjoy stories!  Imagine that, we like listening to stories, and podcasts put information into a very narrative form and thus, makes the information enjoyable to listen to and stimulates our brains. Neuroscientists are always studying what is going on in the brain, and new fMRI technology gives us a small insight into what is going on when we are responding to stimuli.  Our brain is both fixed, and yet impressively flexible system, that is always making new neuroconnections. 

After listening to this podcast (story) about why we should be listening to more podcasts, it made me want to listen to more podcasts, lol!  Podcasts make our brain hum mysterious and delightful, so let's start humming!

Reflections on Reaching All Students

As my students work on their projects, I have the good fortune of being able to reflect a little bit on where they started and where they are now.  I am constantly amazed at how creative, insightful, and hard working my students are, and this comes through in how far they have come with their projects this semester. 

We have all heard about the student or two in each class who are the 'hard to reach' students. Whether it is math, science, or English, sometimes these core classes are not where every student shines, even though they are smart! As teachers we struggle to reach those students who we know have greatness in them, but it has not yet manifested itself in their grades. How do we reach these students? How do we give them opportunities to excel in the classroom?

It may be that the Makerspace or Maker class is where these students can shine brighter than you ever thought. As I see my students working on their projects, I see the intensity, the dedication, the ingenuity, and the intelligence that they may not be able to demonstrate in the typical classroom, but in my classroom, the Makerspace, they excel!  I am very humbled that I have been able to reach theses students, to see them use math, science, and other core subjects in making their projects.  Is it traditional pen on paper writing of algebra or geometry problems? No, it is not. It is making. It is doing. It is hands on using geometry to figure what angles their materials need to be cut at. It is using algebra and calculus to figure out dimensions and angular rotations of pieces they need to assemble. It is using design thinking to determine whether or not their prototype is what they intended it to be, testing it, and then making a new iteration better than the last.

I humbly take some pride in knowing that I have reached some of the students who may otherwise not 'shine' in the typical classroom, are excelling in mine. It is a great feeling!

Project Updates

After having a couple of weeks to work on their projects, my students are coming along quite nicely on what they set out to accomplish. As they have been working on their projects, I am constantly asking them why they are doing what they are doing. I do this so that I know they understand each step in the process, and this also allows me to help with any confusion they may have. In their weekly blog posts, I ask them to reflect on what they did that week, and as an example, I am doing that myself.

I was challenged by the Director of Modern Learning to model to my students, a project of my own, the steps needed to complete the project, and reflections on the project. I chose to build a set of dog stairs for my 2 pugs. My oldest pug is 9 1/2 years old and my youngest is 7 1/2.  My 9 1/2 year old pug, she is a sweetheart, and with older age, she is having trouble jumping up and down off the sofa. In order for her to not injure herself, I thought, why not build a set of stairs to make it easier for her to get up onto the sofa she enjoys so much.


I started by measuring the height of the sofa, from floor to the top of the cushion, approximately 18 inches. I then did some research to see if anyone else had constructed 18 inch high dog stairs. Of course, someone has done this before, and I decided to use their template and replicate the set of stairs they made. You can see the plans here.

I measured out all of the cuts of the wood that I needed to make prior to doing any cutting. As my father told me when I was young, measure twice and cut once, so I did. I even measured a third time to make sure my markings were spot on.

I then cut all of the pieces of wood according to the template and nailed and glued them down according to the template. Some pictures, and I should have taken some before I got this far, and I plan to on my next project, to take more pictures sooner, and at more frequent time points.


The finished product:

Front                                                                              Back

Now, for some closer ups, and as you'll see, my cutting wasn't quite as straight as I thought it was. From this I learned that I should use a miter saw and not a hand held circular saw for more of the cuts.

                                                         Just a little off on this one, lol!

                                                         A little wood glue will fix this!

All in all, I would call it a successful build; however, I am going to try and put wood glue in the cracks, vise clamp it together, and compress the daylights out of it and see if I can't get everything to come together tightly.  Some take aways from this project: 1) I learned that pictures along the way would have been very helpful, and I need to take more of them at more frequent time points, 2) even though I had a template to go off of, the actual product will differ from what the pictures look like, 3) use more precise tools, such as a miter saw for more precise cuts, hand held tools run the risk of human error, and I could see this as the wood steps did not line up exactly with the cleats, 4) modeling a project for my students and empathizing with what they are going through on a daily basis is tiring! I had a great time constructing the stairs, and I hope my students are having just as much fun with their projects!

Updates from the Grant Presentations

It was decided that all of the grant proposal presentations were worth funding!  I am extremely excited about this!  My students came up with great project ideas and were able to convey them in a manner that brought their creativity and ingenuity forward.  This was an interesting process. I asked my students to initially come up with an idea for a project that they wanted to build, and it had to be something they could build, whether it be a website, an app, or something more tangible like an arcade machine, etc.  Each student received a copy of a grant proposal that I wrote while in graduate school; although I was not expecting my students to write something as long or in depth as I did, I did expect a certain level of detail from them. I pushed my students to think critically about the project they were going to propose; what materials will they need, how much do those materials cost, where are the materials going to come from, how long will it take them to build their project, what are their anticipated results, and what are some anticipated improvements they could see making in their next iteration?  All questions that students had some trouble with initially because many of them never have had to think about a budget or a timeline. I really enjoyed seeing them work on the proposals and struggle a bit. The timeline they had to come up with, in my humble opinion, added another level of accountability to their projects. It is something I can hold them to and let them know that this is what they said they are/were going to have accomplished by a certain date. Now that we are in the initial building phase of many of their projects, I asked many of the me for cardboard prototypes first, before we purchase the other more expensive materials, because I want to see how they work with each other, and for them, it will give them a sense of how things do not always go as planned when prototyping. I feel it will give them the chance to iterate several times before they decide on a final plan. I am also asking them to continue to evaluate their process as they move along; are they working efficiently, is there a better way to construct something, etc?


A sampling of some of the projects that are getting started:

A group of students are working on constructing their own virtual reality app!  The requested a BoBo VR Z4 headset and we received it yesterday. The kids had some great reactions when they put the headset on for the first time.

One group of students are creating a mobile arcade machine using a Raspberry Pi. They are working on their cardboard prototype in the photo below.

I have one student working on creating a 3D printed 8 iron head of a golf club. He would like to see if the head of the club could actually be used to hit a golf ball and set some lofty goals for how far he would like to see the ball go; 100 - 130 yards!

Another group of students are working on a challenge that I issued to my classes; to construct from scratch their very own bag toss game (aka Cornhole). They started by learning how to use a miter saw to cut some 2 x 4s.

Grant Proposal Presentations

This week, my students worked on their grant proposal presentations, and gave them yesterday. This was extremely cool! It was similar to the show Shark Tank, where inventors present their ideas to investors and either receive the funding or not.  My students presented their grant proposals to the Head of our Upper School, our Chief Information Officer, Director of Admissions, and Director of Development, in addition some faculty members dropped in throughout the day. It was really cool!

The presentations ranged from a 3D printed golf club head, read this Tweet; to building a pool table from scratch!  It was a great day, and I'm going to be telling the students which grant proposals will receive funding for their project and those who will not on Monday. I am anxiously awaiting the results myself! Stay tuned for more!

Teaching My Students How To Use a Drill Press

This week, we were fortunate enough to inherit a drill press from a family that no longer needs it.

This is a great tool to have at our disposal and will definitely help one of my groups of students with their project. The group is working on something they started last year, but had a little trouble with it. The drill press will allow them to drill holes in the PVC pipe and steel they are going to use for their exoskeleton.  While drilling holes freehand with a regular drill last year, the group found that lining up the PVC and drilling were somewhat challenging. The drill or the PVC would move and either way, it would produce holes that were not lined up properly and thus, did not allow for the bolts they used to line up properly. This all resulted in the exoskeleton not moving the way they anticipated.

I found this to be a great teaching experience. By the students not being able to create exactly what they anticipated, they needed to continually attempt to make better iterations of their exoskeleton. Ultimately, the were able to make an arm for the project and attach it to a steel backbone, but that was as far as they got as we ran out of time as summer approached. Now that we are back in school and we have a drill press, the students can now see how much better the holes are lining up. The drill press is also cutting down on the worry that I have the a hand-held drill will slip off place and catch a finger or part of the table. The drill press allows the students to secure the pieces to the plate and then drill in a  smooth motion.

I also showed the students how to change the speed of the drill press. This is important, as the harder the material and the bigger the drill bit, the slower you want the drill speed. Vice versa, softer materials and smaller drill bits require faster drill speed.


Here is a little video of one of my students using the drill press.

It was a great week coming off of a holiday weekend.

Start of the Year 2016-2017

We're off to a fast start once again at The Oakridge School! My students in my Honors Tech 2.0 class are currently working on grant proposals. You might be asking yourself, 'why are students in a tech class writing grant proposals?'

When I was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, part of my training was in writing project and grant proposals. I decided that this would be a great skill for my students to learn.

My first step in this process was always making an outline of what I wanted to ask to get funded in my grant. I had my students do the same. A big reason I do this, is so that the students learn how to get the big picture (their idea) on paper; give me the executive summary (30,000 ft viewpoint) of the project or purpose of the grant.  The outlines needed to include: 1) introduction, giving me the purpose, background, and significance of the project, 2) methodology, giving me the materials they need, proposed budget and a timeline for completion, 3) anticipated results, tell me in a perfect world how the project will work, and 4) future directions, telling me what the logical next steps for their projects will be, what will be in the next iteration making it better than the last.

The next step, which all of them are currently working on, is writing the full grant proposal. This needs to include all of the sections listed above as well as references. Students that turned in well done outlines, I've found, have an easy time putting some 'meat on the bones,' as I had them think about the outline as a skeleton for their proposal.  Once they finish their proposal, they will then need to turn that into a presentation, either using Prezi, Google Slides, or PowerPoint, and give that presentation to myself and other "grant proposal board members." The purpose of this is to give the students experience presenting their ideas in front of a group, because in every profession I can think of, at one point or another, they will have to present something to someone; whether in business it's pitching to a client, or giving a summary presentation to your boss.

As my students are turning their proposals in, I am amazed at the creativity that I am seeing. It also gives me some great insight into what their interests are outside of school.

It is a great time to be an Owl!

Teaching by Demonstration, Using Epoxy to Hold it Together!

Two of my students decided early this past year that they wanted to create a 3D printed guitar.  It ended up turning out to be pretty cool!  Here is a picture of the guitar so far:

All of the pieces of the bass of the guitar were 3D printed using our PolyPrinter 229. We used 1.75mm ABS filament for our plastic. The bass section of the guitar turned out to be fairly weighty when all was said and done.  You may be asking yourself, how did he get those pieces to adhere to each other?  

First, the students created pieces of the bass of the guitar similar to that of puzzle pieces, they each had a unique shape and size and fit to a corresponding piece or pieces accordingly.  To get the plastic to stay in that configuration, I had the students use Oatey PVC primer and cement. We got the combination primer and cement from Lowe's.  It was this product specifically, Oatey PVC cement and primer combo pack. 

I was initially skeptical that the PVC cement and primer would work on ABS plastic, so I tried it out on some spare 3D printed pieces that we had lying around and by golly, it held them together mighty fine!  I was also concerned about any heat that the reaction between the primer and cement would give off, such that it might melt the ABS plastic since it is different from PVC; however, this is a non-issue, no heat problems to speak of. 

Now, the PVC primer is purple. Anything it touches becomes purple, forever. So, I told my students, that when handling the primer, they needed to be very cautious, they also wore smocks to prevent small splashing from getting on their clothing. I demonstrated how to apply the primer, thin coat, you don't need a ton, and then immediately apply the cement and hold the pieces together. We applied the cement more generously than the primer, but again, not a terribly thick coat, just enough to ooze out of the sides, to which can be sanded or cut off.  This turned out to work great! Each day we added another piece until the bass of the guitar was as you see in the above picture. It is still holding strong months later!  

I found another use for PVC primer and cement aside from using it to fix the PVC piping on a broken sprinkler system (yes, I had some experience of my own fixing some sprinkler related PVC pipe issues at my house).  I let my students know that this is a great skill to have in their repertoire, knowledge of using primers and cement to hold things together.  You never know when you may have to fix your own sprinkler pipe system!

February Challenege Updates & More!

The February challenge has ended and here are some pictures of the entries for the Mardi Gras Mask Challenege:

In addition, one of my groups of students have been collaborating on a very cool website for the game Clash Royale. The students go through and describe their thoughts on Clash Royale changes, provide meta reports, and card information. Pretty cool, check it out!

I also have a group of students working on an exoskeleton that they plan to be able to attach to the back of one of the group members, pretty cool to see them gain some great skills in creating this that they may otherwise not. They have learned how to use saws to cut PVC pipe, use drills to drill holes in PVC, and bolt pieces together.

Yet another group of my students are creating the frame for a 1/3 scale model of a Ford Model T for the Ford Model T Challenge.  Progress can be followed here and on Twitter using the #modeltchallenge.

My students are always amazing me with how creative, inventive, and motivated they can be!

February Challenges

February is here! Mardi Gras time!  In the spirit of Mardi Gras, one of the challenges for the month of February is to 3D print a Mardi Gras mask that is contoured to one's face.  This may seem like a simple challenge, but figuring out how to contour shapes on Tinkercad has been a little more challenging for my students than I originally thought it would be. Some of my students are using AutoDesk Fusion 360 to make their masks.

Here is a picture of some of the first submissions:

We also have a coding challenge going on this month, where students need to program a simple switch on/off coffee pot using a Raspberry Pi or Arduino board and set a timer/make it turn off and on using a program and not just the switch.  As of now, there has not been as much interest in this challenge as I would like, so I am thinking of incentives for the students to get them out of their comfort zone and try something new!

Starting the Spring Semester

We've started the spring semester here at the Oakridge School and things are already moving quickly. January seems to have flown by as we are already in February!

In January, the students and teachers came back from a nice 2 week break.  It took a couple of days for us all to get back into the swing of things, but once we did, we flew!

We hosted a Maker Faire on Saturday January 23rd and had a great turn out!  Many younger prospective students were very interested in what we are doing in our Makerspace. The big attraction for the young ones was the 3D printer. We also had Makey Makey demonstrations, robotics demonstrations, and some engineering demonstrations.  It was a great time for us to showcase to the community what we are doing in the Oakridge Upper School Makerspace.

In the athletics, we hosted the 8th annual Oakridge Iron Championships powerlifting meet where my kids competed well and many took home medals!

In my tech class, I had students write project proposals, what they plan on working on all semester and showing a finishes product in May.  Students submitted proposals for anything from a building an exoskeleton to building a 3D printed model car that runs on an Arduino motor!  I have some students building websites and others building 3D printed card holder boxes that will have movable parts to bring the cards up as you open the box.  It continually amazes me the different ideas students will come up with.

In addition, we have our challenges back and going for February with 2 month long challenges. The first is coding/programming a simple switch activated coffee pot to be programmable using either a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. The second is to 3D print a Mardi Gras mask that is contoured to fit a person's face, not just a flat mask. I even got in some gold filament for the Mardi Gras prints!

So far, I have 1 submission for the Mardi Gras mask challenge, and here is a picture of it printing (which is why the focus is off, the printer is going):

Lots of great things going on at Oakridge right now, it is a great time to be an Owl!