Thursday, July 30, 2015

MaKEY MaKEY Day 2

Today was the second day of Makey Makey Mixcraft. The students understand how to use their MaKEY MaKEY kits and so today was all about getting acquainted with Mixcraft and seeing all of the cool things that it can do. We are basically creating virtual instrument tracks and then playing them with the inputs from the kits. Its all MIDI so we can rearrange things and tweak them after the fact.

 So far so good!


Tuesday, July 28, 2015

MaKEY MaKEY Mixcraft

Today was our first day of MaKEY MaKEY Mixcraft!

We've done this program in the past, and it was a lot of fun, but this time we'll be taking it to the next level, by directly integrating our MaKEY MaKEY kits into the Acoustica Mixcraft software in order to play virtual instruments!

The result is that we can use "touchpads" made out of tin foil that we tape to our desk to play virtual midi instruments on!



Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Hour of Code

Today was our monthly Hour of Code!  Unfortunately, summer is in full-effect so we only had two students show up, but they learned a lot.

Our Hour of Code classes are a bit of a different animal.  Rather than teach the students from lesson plans, we set them loose on their own according to their skill level.  It's a chill atmosphere where we listen to music and help each other learn.

We've got an Hour of Code scheduled every month, so join the club, come hang out and learn something!

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Robotics - Last Day!

Well, in a lot of respects, the last day of our robotics class was a lot like our first.  We just didn't get much done.

Progress was very slow as we attempted to figure out these Finchbots, but we managed to do a lot of cool things like make the robots lights change color in pre-programmed ways and run routes that we designed to get around obstacles.

I feel like we're just beginning to scratch the surface and here it is time to move on to the next project.

We will definitely be revisiting the Finch bots and trying again soon!


Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Robotics Day 3 - Birdbrains working on Birdbrain


Today was the return of the Finch Robot! With some creative thinking, we got them working. We did some basic programming like programming the Finch to move in any direction and getting the Finch's nose to light up. We are hoping to do more with this on the last day now that we have everything figured out. The possibilities are endless!

Thursday, July 9, 2015

(Not so much) Robotics - Day 2

Today, we had some technical difficulties and all computers were down in our room! With some quick thinking, we planned a last minute class of some good old soldering. We tried to make a Light-Following Spider robot. The kids seemed to really enjoy the class and have demanded an encore of this soldering class since we could not finish the spider. Hopefully, everything is fixed for the next class and we can get back to the FinchBot!


Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Robotics - Day 1

What is the Finch Robot? That's what today's class is all about.  We've never seen these robots before, and we don't know how they work.  Together we're going to figure out what makes them tick and how to make them go.




Thursday, July 2, 2015

TinkerCAD - Last Day

Today is the last day of TinkerCAD class for the summer.  Our students have been working on their designs for the last 3 classes and today is the day to put the finishing touches on their objects and get them ready to be sent to our Makerbot Replicator to be printed into real objects.

We will update the blog soon with pictures of how each object turned out.  Remember not all 3D designs are "printer friendly".  Will all of the objects turn out as intended or will we see some disasters hit the build plate?  Stay tuned to find out!