At long last, students on Tuesday 4/26/16 began their work with the club's first non-consumable, project hardware in the form of LittleBits and SnapCircuit kits. These are the first two hardware sets that were ordered from the grant, to be followed with LEGO Mindstorms kits in the fall, 3D printers, and more. After students filled out their first Burroughs-Wellcome program evaluation forms, Stephanie discussed electrical engineering and shared snippets from a TEDx video where a female engineer discussed the lack of women in the engineering field. Students then logged into GameLab to access either the first LittleBits quest or the first SnapCircuits quest. Four teams worked through a set of provided LittleBits challenges, a fifth team worked on SnapCircuits projects, and a sixth team worked with a Web-based circuitry game.
After a two-week break in which Mary Clay and Deborah presented about the iNEST Maker Club and the 3D GameLab gamification platform at Wake County's Converge conference, the club picked up again on Tuesday, April 19th to continue fabricating paper masks. Some pics of student designs are shown below: On Saturday, April 23rd, eleven club members and three chaperones (Dupree, Oliver, Vick) took the club's first field trip to the Burlington mini-maker faire, and to Elon University where they took a tour of the campus Maker Hub and learned about maker projects that college students are creating. At Elon, students took part in a spaghetti tower-building challenge, and two Elon undergraduates shared a 3D print project they are working on to solve the problem of children's fears from receiving shots at the doctor's office. The students had created 3D printed characters to hide the syringe and needle and make receiving shots more kid-friendly and less scary. Pics from our field trip are included below. It was a great time, and we hope even more club members will attend our next field trip. Thanks to Mary Clay for organizing the first field trip, setting the agenda (shown below), collecting permission forms, and even driving the activity bus! |
Purpose:Dr. Oliver's weekly update of activities in the iNEST Maker Club. Archives
April 2019
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