Oct16

October 16 starts a busy 2 weeks, with something everyday.
Monday was a first visit to Lakeview Elementary to do some laser cutting with students. They only have iPads, so design options are limited. They had recently taken a field trip with a forestry expert, so we had them find an SVG representing some of the trees they learned about. We were going to use The Noun Project, but after getting an account they got a “403 forbidden” message, so we jsut used google search. Somehow, if they went to the noun project from there, it worked. One sticking point we had is kids kept getting PNG or JPG (because of time constraintsI didnt want to engrave, I wanted to score & cut). They had to email the image to me as an attachment. So 20 students learned several things : finding an svg, emailing, AND some images arent good to cut, as some pieces get cut off (I put some of them inside a circle and scored them like an ornament).

Tuesday I went to Area 31 in Indianapolis for “Build Your Future Girls Construction Camp”. They are having camp all week with a dozen or so MS girls. The morning is some talks about construction professions and a couple of build projects. This day was string art and snap circuits. The afternoon is a field trip to a job site. I think today was a house building site.

Tuesday was also a first visit to Childs Elementary for afterschool with 25 learners (and 3 teachers and 2 high school helpers). They are using some of the BYF kits to do some intro to professions but really to get the kids building something. It just so happened that they were working with the snap circuit kits today.

Wednesday was a variety of meetings about projects and grants

Thursday had me visiting 2 schools. In the afternoon I went to Lawrence County Independent Schools to help with a STEM class. A dozen students were finishing up some paper mache masks for a Fall Festival. The most important thing I did was help 2 students get the slingshot on their pumpkin launcher and test it out. It worked great for small pumpkins (or those large nuts that fall from the trees this time of year.

Lakeview STEM club was Thursday after school. We had 15 3rd/4th graders. We took a walk on their trail through the woods, measuring distances between key places, noting waypoints (coordinates) of these key places. We will be making a map of the trail in an upcoming session

Friday was two schools also. The morning had me at Linton Stockton to help 8 4th/5th graders get started with their Lego Spike Prime Robotics kit. We just looked at the I/O parts, not the building pieces. Each student took a turn coding one or two of the I/O devices.

Then I was off to Lawrence County Independent School for their Fall Festival. I set up 2 tables, one with a 3D printer going and LED & batteries. The other table had pipe cleaners and craft sticks to build with. Dozens of kids came by to build or light up a light or see the 3D printer.