End of the Semester

We've come to the end of the semester, and that means it is exam time!  While the students in my tech classes will not have a final in the traditional sense, they all contributed to the Makerspace throughout the semester and I was able to grade them on the pictures they took, the blogs they wrote, and their participation in the everyday activities.

We had a bunch of winners collect their winning from our October challenges last week, here is a picture with the students and their winnings!

In addition, we had a light bulb shaped cookie cutter challenge, and here is our winner with one dozen light bulb shaped cookies from Cookie Genius.

And then we had our challenge for the months of Nov/Dec, to make the most creative 3D printed cookie cutter. Here are pictures of our submissions and our winner with some cookies!

While the students take their exams, I'll still be running our 3D printer non-stop!  Last week, we printed out half of a chess set, and today I am printing the other half so that our chess club will have a unique, 3D printed chess set!

We had a great fall semester. I am looking forward to an even better spring semester with more challenges, more ideas, and more creativity!

Back After Thanksgiving Break

We're back to school this week after a nice little break for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Many of the students traveled over the holidays, so getting back into the swing of things today was a little rocky, lol!

We managed to get the outer 'posters' on the Time Square billboard. Also, as you can see from the picture the Empire State building and the Chrysler building are missing. They are currently being painted by my classes to make them more life like and give our winter scene from New York a little more color!

We are also working on 3-D printing cookie cutters this week using the website Cookie Caster.  The challenge over the next 2 weeks is to come up with the most artistic/creative cookie cutter and win some cookies!  I thought this might be a fun, yet easier challenge for the students, given we are heading down the home stretch into finals week in just 8 more academic days!  Yikes!  It feels as if the semester has flown by, but I'm sure students would tell you otherwise.

I'm looking forward to showing off some of the creative cookie cutters that are made. I think that the fun part will be the kids taking them home and seeing if they will actually function and cut the dough!

Some Updates

It's been a while since my last blog post, but fear not, much has happened!  My students are doing some amazing things! 

We finished up the October challenges and I believe the kids had some great fun with them.  After the rubber band powered Lego car challenge, we moved right into the most creative 3D printed Jack-O-Lantern.  Below is the picture of the winning Jack-O-Lantern.

We then moved on the final week of October into the candy corn catapult challenge. The students made catapults using only popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and plastic spoons. The person or team to launch the candy corn the farthest won the challenge.  Unfortunately, I do not have a video of the farthest launch, but it measured a whopping 82 feet!

We are now into mid-November and I have my classes working on 3D printing and constructing out of Legos, a winter scene from Times Square and Rockefeller Center.  So far this is what we have:

The green print will be our tree for Rockefeller Center, it still needs to be trimmed, just like a real tree!  We also have a skating rink that needs to be painted, and our plan is to have the skater twirling around on the rink using an Arduino motor.  We also plan to print replicas of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Buidling.  I'll post a picture of the finished scene once it is up!

October Makerspace Challenge Update: Entries for the Lego Car Challenge and Winner

Here are some videos of the rubber band powered Lego cars that my students have made from last week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The winning car below!

 

 

Our next challenge for this week is for a student to use a Makey Makey and design a functional keyboard using non-traditional keyboard components.  The first students to accomplish this, win free pizza!  

October Makerspace Challenges

Starting this month, we are doing weekly and monthly challenges. 

The month long challenge will be: using a 16x32 LED board, program a face for a LED Jack-O-Lantern. Students will be able to program this with either their Lenovo or a Raspberry Pi. Students will also carve out a pumpkin, and then place their LED board into the pumpkin and light it up.

October 5th - 9th: rubber band powered Lego car.  Students will only use Legos and rubber bands to make their creations go! The car that goes the farthest wins the challenge.

October 12th - 16th: Makey Makey challenge. The first group of students to make the Makey Makey keyboard out of organic materials wins the challenge.

October 19th - 23rd: 3D print a Jack-O-Lantern. The 3D printed pumpkin must have a face! The coolest and most creative design wins! Prints are limited to 4in x 4in x 4in.

October 26th - 30th: candy corn catapult challenge! Using only popsicle sticks, plastic spoons, and rubber bands, the students who can launch the candy corn the farthest wins the challenge!

I am really looking forward to the upcoming month! I think the challenges will really bring out some fantastic creativity in the kids.  And, to help incentivize this for the students, the winners of the challenges will earn an off-campus lunch at Cici's Pizza!

3D Printing, Taking Off!!!

We're just a little over a month into school now, and the Makerspace is really starting to bring students in! Of course, the big attraction thus far has been the 3D printer, and my students are 3D printing like crazy! It has been a very rewarding experience thus far, seeing the students hold their creations, has really allowed for some excellent hands-on learning to take place. In addition, teaching the students how to use the printer, and now allowing them to use the printer when I am not around is fantastic, we have had no issues thus far. The students are taking the privilege very seriously, and are designing some great things. 

While I encourage completely authentic prints, I have allowed them to use templates to create their 3D prints, but the caveat is that they must make it their own, they are not simply allowed to print someone else's design, they have to tinker it and make it their own, then they can print it.

Here are some pictures and videos of what the students have been creating:

 

Starting next week, will be our October challenges! Stay tuned for the monthly and weekly challenges.

Robotics and 3-D Printing

The first challenge of the semester that we posted for the students was to get a robotic car up and running, and the first student to do so wins a Subway lunch combo on Mr. Kern, our CIO and Director of Modern Learning.

Sure enough, within the first two weeks of school, we had a student complete the challenge and win! My student, David, built an operational robotic car using GoPiGo components, a Hummingbird Duo board, and programmed it using Python software.

Here's a video of the car going!

ALSO........

We received our (loaner, ours should come in bout 4-weeks) 3-D printer last week and put it to good use!  The students are extremely excited about the printer and I have a HUGE que of student items waiting to be printed!  We are using a PolyPrinter 229, and thus far it has been working wonderfull.

Over the first few weeks, I had the students check out the 3-D printing design website TinkerCad. I posted a challenge for the students on the windows of the Makerspace, to design a brand new logo for our Makerspace. Each entry will have their 3-D designs printed, we will vote on the best design, and the winner will enjoy a snack pack bucket from me!

I'll post pictures of the prints as we print them.  It is an exciting time to be an Oakridge Owl!