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.