10/30/2018. Today in the iNEST Maker Club, the girls finished up their soft circuit pins and recorded their reflections on our circuitry FlipGrid board. Next week, the club will begin our new unit on Microbits with several fun projects tied to coding. Next week the club is also sponsoring a 6th grade field trip to the Marbles museum with an IMAX film.
10/23/2018. This week in the iNEST maker club... the girls started the meeting by recording FlipGrids about their Scratch projects from last week and/or commenting on their peers' FlipGrids. Afterwards, the girls worked through a practice sewing activity to learn the basics of working with needles/thread/felt, then moved on to a soft circuit project in which a light-up LED is sewn with conductive thread through a felt cut-out to a coin cell battery pack that provides the power for the LED. Halloween cut-outs were provided in association with the coming holiday. The girls will be finishing up their brooches next week, a day prior to Halloween.
10/16/2018. In this week's iNEST Maker Club meeting, after a club photo for the school yearbook the girls finished up their Scratch coding projects using the Scratch coding cards, with some students showing amazing progress (e.g., original maze games). The high schoolers helped club mentors test out the new Microbits that will be rolled out after Halloween. We're pleased to report the Microbits work with the older Wake County laptops, so we should be good to go in a few weeks with a lot of exciting Microbit coding projects. The next two weeks in the maker club, the girls will be working on soft circuit projects with light-up holiday pins, then we will get back to coding in early November.
10/9/2018. This week in the iNEST maker club, the girls continued learning the Scratch coding language by practicing with the Scratch coding cards. The cards allow the girls to program simple games like pong and catch as they learn about code blocks and coding concepts like variables. About eight to ten different card sets are available, so the girls who finish coding a game or interaction before the club ends can start on a new set of cards. We continue to encourage the girls to record FlipGrid videos, reflecting on each of their coded projects. The girls' new coding skills will be put to the test in coming weeks as we start to work with physical computing platforms, MicroBit and Hummingbird, that will require coding.
10/2/2018. In preparation for our upcoming work with MicroBits and Hummingbird Robotics, the girls today started learning to code with the kid-friendly Scratch program. The program uses drag-and-drop blocks to write common programming functions (e.g., when space bar is pressed..., if x then y...). In today's club meeting, the girls played with the Scratch "starter cards" that teach basic functions. Next week, the girls will be working with additional coding cards that teach them to write simple games and interactions. Ultimately, this new knowledge will be put to the test as girls write their own original programs to activate sensors and effectors on MicroBit and Hummingbird controllers. In other news, today we gave the girls laminated cards with question prompts designed to elicit computational thinking, and asked the girls to reflect on their coding on our programming and robotics FlipGrid board. We have been using reflections and FlipGrid for some time, but this is the first time we've had cards to remind the girls of the question prompts we want them to answer. We are in the process of creating a second set of laminated cards that will remind the girls of question prompts we want them to answer when reviewing and replying to other students' FlipGrid videos. The girls are doing a great job with both FlipGrid reflections and FlipGrid replies this fall.
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Purpose:Dr. Oliver's weekly update of activities in the iNEST Maker Club. Archives
April 2019
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